The Merry Killers
by The Sage of Toads
Summary: The Hinata-sou is a dangerous place to be, even if you're Keitaro Urashima. But when it's the base for Japan's greatest assassins, danger comes in more forms than accidents...
1. A Miraculous Failure

Disclaimer: Some things in this life, people say should never be written. Some things in life, people say are impossible to write. Even somer things, people say, would be impossible to read because it's just impossible. Well then, it's time to see what is Impossible.

* * *

Keitaro Urashima yearned for the peace and serenity of the Hinata-sou, an Inn owned by his family in the Kanagawa Prefecture, on the outskirts of Hinata City. His most recent and most spectacular failure to enter Tokyo University had resulted in his most recent and most spectacular fight with his parents–prompting him to move out of the house. So, he came to this place of warm childhood memories and fond nostalgia, seeking to find a quiet place to study for his dreams.

Instead, he was punched through it, from the Inn's hot springs to the arch at the top of the steps. Every wall between the two points breached by his body-turned-missile until the cobblestone path finally slowed him to a stop.

Lying face down on the ground at the end of the long trench he created, Keitaro took a deep breath and slowly pushed himself up to a sitting position.

Taking a deep breath, he shook his head, and turned to look back. There in front of him was a beautiful, very angry young woman wearing only a towel flying straight for him through the holes his body made–drawing her fist back to finish him off.

This took him back, he thought, before her fist met his face expediently.

**Love Hina: The Merry Killers  
Chapter 1: A Miraculous Failure**

The Urashima Family is one of Japan's better kept secrets. Since before the Sengoku Era, they served the greater good as spies, assassins, and every so often scapegoats for the various powers that would come to claim rule of the country. Even today, they steadfastly serve the Japanese Government, and Keitaro Urashima is the most sterling example of grace, efficiency, precision, and–wait, no… I'm sorry; I was reciting someone else's bullshit.

Keitaro Urashima, 20 years old, is the black sheep of the family despite his amazing ability: although the doctor literally dropped him on his head as a newborn child (out of a two story window; the doctor admitted to being a spy from a rival family after two and a half days of torture) Keitaro survived with no injuries, and that was only the beginning of his indestructible feats. For a family of Ninja, Assassins, and other such productive professions, a child who could take a .50 BMG to the face and only express slight dismay at the sting was a boon. However, he had no coordination for ninja skills, no stomach for assassination, and frankly he was a touch too dumb for the subtleties and nuances of spy work.

A miraculous failure, thy name is Keitaro Urashima.

At first they expected his ineptitude was a passing phase, but after failed training attempts and many, many mistakes whenever headway was made, they were convinced that while his body was clearly made for the art, his mind was definitely not. Despite the disappointment, the Urashima Family was a patient one, and they always rolled with the punches to get what they want, which was why he was here sitting at the top of the steps leading to the Hinata-sou, mostly naked, with Naru Narusegawa's halted fist less than a millimeter from his face.

"You should be dead," she said calmly for a young woman who had just punched a man through a house.

Keitaro honestly couldn't help himself. "A lot of people say that."

Naru stood back and tightened her towel around her body. She looked at her fist, and punched him in the head.

"Ow!"

Humming, she walked over to one of the many trees that surrounded the inn and punched it with thereabouts the same force, splintering the trunk and sending it toppling over.

She looked back at Keitaro, rubbing his head in annoyance, and then walked back over. "Okay, you have my attention!"

Keitaro looked up. "Huh?"

"Who the Hell are you, and why can't I splatter you all over the countryside like so many Russians at Kursk?"

That was a weird reference. "Um… I'm Keitaro Urashima… my family owns this Inn." He slowly got up, making sure he was decent. "I'm sorry for giving you a scare."

The pretty brown-haired girl blinked in surprise at the namedrop, and gaped at him. _"You're_ Keitaro?!"

He stopped. "Am I not supposed to be?"

The fact that Naru began giggling like an idiot only caused Keitaro far greater concern. She was covering her mouth and looking away from him and everything, like the funniest thing in the world just happened and it was taking everything she had to not explode into a fit.

"Is… are you okay?" Keitaro asked.

Naru offered him a hand. "Oh I'm just fine, here," she said, pulling him to his feet when he accepted. "I should be the one apologizing. I was the one who walked in on you, but to be fair you are a guy just showing up at a girl's dormitory unannounced and taking a bath like you own the place."

Keitaro looked at the house. "A girl's dormitory, it's not an inn anymore?"

"Hasn't been one for years, are you sure you're an Urashima? You should know this."

Keitaro scratched the back of his head. "Well, me and all of my family are kind of estranged, for uh… reasons."

Naru nodded. "Oh, I see. So why are you here, then?"

"Well, I was um… well…" Keitaro rubbed the back of his head. "I thought I'd come here to study for Entrance Exams to Toudai somewhere peaceful, but things have really changed."

Naru nodded again with a small smirk. "They just had entrance exams though. What, didn't get in?"

"For the second time…"

"Oh… so you're a two-time ronin in this day and age? What a shame." She gestured to the house. "We should head inside. As riveting as this conversation is, I don't want to be caught out here talking to a guy in a towel when the girls show up."

Keitaro followed Naru back to the front door. "Oh, how many live here?"

"Me included, there's five of us. Haruka-san is the landlord, remember her?"

"Yeah I remember Auntie, I tried calling her up ahead but I didn't get any answer."

Naru nodded. "That's about right, she always has her phone off when she's entertaining guests at the tea shop."

Keitaro cringed. "Oh… so she's busy…"

They walked straight through the holes Keitaro made in the wall, careful to step over splinters and duck under the jagged edges of the holes. Now that he was measuring it, he could not help but be impressed at her strength. "You must have extraordinary control, unless putting a guy through a house is normal around here."

Not that it bothered him, he lived in Nerima for most of his life after all, and he was an Urashima.

"When I was in High School it was terrible, I had to change schools five times because of my temper getting the better of me," Naru admitted. "But I'm much, much better now."

They reached the bath, and Naru handed him his clothes. "Honestly, that's the first time I lost control like that in a long time."

Taking his clothes graciously, Keitaro stepped out the changing room and back into the hallway to let her change in private. "You must have the patience of a Saint, then."

"I wouldn't say that, I just have healthy outlets for my violence," Naru called back from beyond the doorway.

Keitaro nodded, not realizing he had no one to see the gesture. "I'm sure you do."

He then realized that there was no one to see, self-consciously cursed for nodding like an idiot to no one, and decided that as long as no one was looking he would change too.

"So what's your deal, are you a long time Nerima resident, or something? Most folks don't tend to get up after being punched through a house."

Keitaro dropped his towel, and shook out his boxers. "I don't know how to explain it other than I can take a lot of damage. People can go to town on me for days, and I will shrug it off."

Naru chuckled. "Well, stick around here and that'll be put to the test."

Keitaro didn't respond, and with some concern Naru stuck her head out the door. "Keitarohshit."

Keitaro, butt-ass naked in the middle of the hallway, was frozen where he stood as he stared at the small blue-haired girl in a middle school uniform staring back at him with wide eyes that kept getting wider as her gaze slowly slipped lower over the young man.

Lifting her hand to her face as Shinobu began to inhale, Naru sighed. "And here… we… go."

* * *

Coming up the stairs leading to the Hinata-sou were two more young women and residents of the Hinata-sou. Mitsune "Kitsune" Konno, an attractive woman of sharp fashion with short light brown hair and a permanently fox-like expression, was counting a fistful of dollars as she strolled leisurely alongside a younger girl with long black hair. The younger woman in a high school uniform, Motoko Aoyama, wore an expression of annoyance as her companion practically drooled over her newfound wealth.

"Today was such a chore, I knew skipping class for this would've gone badly," Motoko lamented.

"But look at all the scratch you made for it! You'll be able to buy that new laptop you wanted with this!" Kitsune reassured her.

"Most of my cut will go towards repairing my sword." She gave Kitsune a sloe-eyed look. "Unless you're willing to offer more of yours."

Kitsune genuinely considered the charity, but luckily the subject changed before she could be guilted further into giving up money. The two of them came upon the damage done to the path leading to the house, and to the house itself.

"Were we expecting any guests?" Kitsune asked as she drew a closed iron war fan from the loose sleeves of the bomber jacket she wore.

Motoko unwrapped the sword she carried over her shoulder, and slowly drew the chipped and pockmarked blade from its sheath. "None."

"KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

The scream of their youngest resident, Shinobu Maehara, threw both women into action and they charged into the house through the hole made through it. Quickly outstripping the older woman, the sword-wielding high-school girl reached Shinobu with her blade ready and found her covering her face with both hands with her back to a man struggling to get dressed, both yelping quick and embarrassed apologies.

Motoko of course only saw the naked man exposing himself to two teenaged girls, and her vision became a beautiful shade of red.

"PERVERT!"

Keitaro looked from Shinobu to Motoko, raising her sword over her head, and let out a whimper.

Back outside, Haruka Urashima worriedly jogged up the stairs. The near-thirty woman was huffing on a cigarette as she looked at the screen of her smartphone and the missed call list. "You call three times and don't bother leaving a message, Keitaro? I hope you didn't just go in, or-!"

There was a tremendous crash, a rumble, and then a scream. Stopping near the top of the stairs, Haruka watched as her nephew spiraled into the air screaming at the top of his lungs. "… That would happen."

Her head slowly craning back, its stopped and then began to tilt back down and to her left, her eyes following Keitaro down until he hit the ground with a loud crash in the trees not too far to her side.

"Keitaro," she called to him, "You okay?"

There was only a muffled groan. Peering into the trees, she found her nephew embedded head first into the ground up to his waist. He was still kicking. "Yeah, you're all right."

Starting a call, Haruka waited for an answer and rolled her eyes when she herself got an answering machine. At the sound of the beep, she spoke…

"Oi Granny, you'd better call back quick. You know how I talked about convincing Keitaro to come to the Inn? Well, you won't believe what just saved me a whole lot of trouble…"

* * *

A/N: Oh no, another generic Love Hina Story.


	2. Something my sword cannot cut

Disclaimer: May I play with your expectations? I like how you squirm when I poke them with sharp objects and Anti-Ship Weapons.

* * *

_Earlier that day…_

"_Once again, I have cut worthless things."_

Motoko hated when her sword had to be used to cut something anything other than its intended purpose. A sword was for killing men–striking down the enemies of her family, school, and nation. Using her sword for such menial work, especially the menial work of someone else, was abhorrent.

"Give it a rest, we got paid didn't we? It may seem like such a tedious thing to you, but this is the sort of thing good decent people appreciate."

"This is worse than chopping tuna," Motoko replied.

Motoko looked to Kitsune, who like her was dressed in a hooded yellow slicker and boots. In her hand, Kitsune waved back and forth a huge wad of bills in her gloved hand. "It's the easiest million yen you've ever earned," she said cheerfully.

Snorting in annoyance, Motoko wiped her sword with a paper towel. "That I had to use my sword for such a paltry fee just makes it even worse. I demand a seventy-thirty cut of the reward."

Kitsune blanched at the very prospect. "We had a deal, fifty-fifty."

"Seventy-thirty." Finished wiping the blade, Motoko tossed the paper towel over her shoulder and onto the bisected corpse of a man wearing a suit and sunglasses. "My sword was damaged."

"Fine, I'll think about it!" Kitsune said loudly. "Now come on, the Christmas Cake had some big news and wanted us home for it."

Motoko nodded and fell into step with Kitsune, the two women leaving in their wake a room full of slaughtered Yakuza, an entire gang annihilated from the lowliest soldier to the boss.

**Love Hina: The Merry Killers  
Chapter 2: There is Something My Sword Cannot Cut!**

The four residents of the Hinata-sou, Naru, Shinobu, Motoko, and Kitsune were gathered in the living room of the house along with the landlord, Haruka Urashima, and her nephew. As he looked around at the girls staring at him, Keitaro was relieved to be wearing clothes and that no one hasn't assaulted him in the last five or ten minutes.

"We should kill him, dump his corpse, and be done with him." Though not for lack of trying.

"Motoko, just chill out for a second?" Naru asked.

Motoko partially drew her sword. "This man exposed himself to the residents of a girl's dormitory! That's no reason to 'chill out'!"

Placing her hand on the end of Motoko's hilt, Naru pushed the sword back into its sheath. "It was an accident, Motoko. Besides, you and I both hit him with our best shots and he didn't die, so anything else will just give more work for Su to clean up."

"I most certainly did not hit him with _my_ best," Motoko growled as she glowered at him.

"Oh, I'm sure you'll get a chance to try," Naru muttered under her breath.

"What was that?"

"I'm saying let's not go crazy all right?" Naru looked to Haruka. "Right?"

"Right," Haruka took a drag from her cigarette. "Not that I'm upset that you're here, but what brings you here?"

Keitaro flushed in embarrassment. "I came here to do some studying, but I didn't know that the Inn had become a girl's dorm."

Haruka hummed. "That's right, you should be in Toudai by now, right?"

Keitaro hung his head. "I'm actually a ronin."

"You didn't get in?" Haruka's eyebrows rose in disbelief.

Keitaro sighed. "… For the second time…"

Haruka cringed. "Oh."

Motoko began to draw her sword again. "How disgusting…"

Naru again pushed the sword back into its sheath. "No."

Shinobu peered from behind Kitsune, a small blush painting her face as she stared at Keitaro. Patting the younger girl on the head, Kitsune smiled. "A two-time Ronin, how are those even a thing these days? Most failures either aim lower or pitch themselves off the tallest building they can find after the second time."

"Obviously the second option is off the table," Naru said as she gestured to the holes in the house.

"He hasn't tried hard enough, and I'm willing to help," Motoko seethed. She couldn't get her sword unsheathed due to Naru's hand remaining on it.

"Yes, horrible pervert I get it but you're being uncharacteristically bloodthirsty, Aoyama," Naru pointed out.

Motoko finally stopped trying to draw her sword, and sighed. "I'm sorry, but he is a man of the Urashima, yes?"

Keitaro scooted a bit away from Motoko. "Wait, what's that got to do with anything?"

Motoko glared at him pointedly. "It's my life's goal to slay all men in your clan."

"Oh." Keitaro looked around nervously, before turning to Haruka. "Can I just um… go?"

Kitsune patted him on the shoulder. "Oh relax there, buddy! She's not actually allowed to harm a hair on your head until she kills some guy named Keitaro first."

And suddenly, Naru's laughing made all the sense in the world. He quickly looked to Haruka, hoping for permission to run for his life and away from the crazy sword girl.

Haruka did him no favors, in fact she did him a disservice. "But this is Keitaro, my nephew."

Kitsune looked down at Keitaro, and then up at Motoko. Motoko's expression morphed, like in slow motion, from glowering into shock, to realization, to a smile and finally into a blood and shit-eating grin that stretched across her face.

Looking back down at her hand, Kitsune slowly removed it from Keitaro's shoulder and stepped back.

Keitaro threw up his hands towards Motoko. "Whoa, wait, hold on! Can we talk about-!"

Motoko shoved Naru aside and swiftly drew her sword to cut him clean in half. Instead, the sword struck Keitaro and launched him through several walls and into a ballistic arc over the trees.

Motoko stared at the hole she made in disbelief, and then at her sword. "What?"

"That's coming out of your rent," Haruka said.

Screaming, Keitaro bounced off a tree, then another, and then another. To any spectators above the trees, he would've resembled a pinball ricocheting off bumpers except with various sounds of pain instead of dings and pings. After ten seconds too long of bouncing about, Keitaro crashed into an especially elastic pine and was shot back towards the inn.

Motoko saw him coming back, and quickly jumped out the newest hole his exit made. Taking the sword in both hands, she placed it into a low stance as invisible waves of ki radiated from her body, picking up leaves, dust, and debris and swirling them around her in a weak vortex.

"Oh boy…" Kitsune said as she covered Shinobu's eyes. Naru watched in amusement, while Haruka took another slow drag from her cigarette.

"Shinmei-Ryu secret technique…!" Motoko growled.

She jumped up, unleashing a powerful uppercut with her sword that connected with Keitaro's stomach.

"_ZANGANKEN!"_

The force of the impact launched Keitaro straight up into the air, which immediately bothered Motoko because it was supposed to slice him messily in half. Landing on her feet, she looked at her sword. "Impossible, that should have cut him like a tuna!"

Haruka stepped out of the hole, followed by Naru, and looked up into the sky. "Huh, good to see that hasn't changed."

"Haruka-san!" Motoko demanded loudly. "What is that man? He should be dead!"

"Huh, people really must say that a lot," Naru remarked.

"That's Keitaro," Haruka replied coolly.

Motoko looked down at her sword, and then back at the Urashima woman. "Yes but what is he?! Superhuman strength is one thing, but to not be cut by a sword?!"

"You didn't think it would be that easy, did you?" Haruka asked.

Motoko stopped, and glared at Haruka. "You… this…!"

Haruka looked up. "Look out-"

Keitaro fell back down, landing headfirst onto Motoko with a sound not unlike a bell tolling. Frozen in that position for several seconds, connected at the skulls, Keitaro fell off Motoko and hit the ground. Dazed and stumbling from side to side, Motoko teetered forward and then fell backwards onto Keitaro. Both were unconscious, but at least still alive.

Naru shook her head. "You're a real bitch, Haruka."

"This was her sister's idea, I just went with it."

Kitsune and Shinobu walked over, the former asking, "So what's going to happen to him now?"

Before Haruka could answer, her phone rang. Checking who it was, she smiled when she saw "Hina" on the screen. "Funny you should ask that, Kon-chan."

* * *

A sandbox and a girl building a sandcastle filled Keitaro's vision as he opened his eyes. Staring at the little girl in the striped shirt and red skirt, he felt relaxed and happy. Walking over to the edge of the sandbox, he prepared to call out to her when he heard a womans' voice behind him.

_"You're still on about that girl?"_

His fond childhood memory turned to darkness, and fear clenched his heart. He looked over his shoulders, and saw a pair of red eyes staring at him from the darkness. A smile materialized under them.

A voice came from the Cheshire Cat grin that remained fixed in the void, unmoving. _"You know I'm the only promise you have to keep…"_

He closed his eyes when a woman's arms, pitch black as the darkness around him, circled his chest from behind. Opening them and looking back, the woman's smiling face was right next to his.

_"Don't scream when you wake up, you'll scare them,"_ she whispered to him before the smile opened wide to reveal rows and rows of long, needle-like teeth going down forever as the maw closed around his head.

Keitaro quietly woke up lying on the couch that Motoko had launched him from. The first thing he noticed was the dark-skinned blond girl sitting on his stomach, sniffing his face like a dog would. Staring blankly at the girl, he remained perfectly still as the girl hummed appreciatively, before licking his face as a dog would.

"Hmm… he smells good, but he does not taste good." The girl, Kaolla Su, tilted her chin up frowned at her observation before she got an idea. "Aha! Perhaps I am licking the wrong parts~."

She bit her lower lip and looked back down at him with a very seductive gaze. "I wonder what part I should lick first?"

Su canned the seductive expression when she saw that he was awake. "Ah."

"Could you please get off me?" Keitaro politely asked.

Su grinned broadly. "But you're comfy, and you smell nice!"

"Please don't give anyone any excuses to hit me."

"Don't mind her," Naru said as she removed Su from Keitaro by the collar of her school uniform. "Su's just got different ideas about personal space and physical contact, being from Molmol and all."

Keitaro blinked and stared at the giggling girl as she tried in vain to get free of Naru. He'd never seen a Molmolese before, and given how most Japanese were batshit terrified of them, he'd expected something less… cute.

Set down, Su immediately hugged Naru, nuzzling her chest affectionately before looking up at her. "So who is he?"

"Oh, this is Keitaro, Haruka's nephew."

As Naru filled Su in, Keitaro sat up and immediately noticed something strange. The damage to the holes he'd made in the house were gone, as if they had never happened.

Su grew excited. "Oh! He's the one Momo has to kill, right?"

Keitaro snapped his attention back to Su and Naru. "Wait, _has_ to kill?"

"Don't worry, it's not like she can, right?" Naru asked.

Keitaro actually had no doubt in his mind that she couldn't, still…

"Why is she so hell-bent on killing me, on killing all Urashima men?"

Naru shrugged her shoulders. "Beats me, she just showed up like a year ago, and Haruka told us she was here to train to kill you so she could have the right to kill every Urashima man."

Keitaro got up. "Well I'm going to find out what her deal is-"

Out of nowhere, Motoko stabbed him in the stomach with her sword. Or at least would have, if Keitaro was not thrown back over the couch by the impact rather than being skewered clean through. Tumbling across the floor, he crashed into the wall and created a spiderweb of cracks across the wood.

Motoko looked at her sword and then at Keitaro, completely baffled. "Impossible…"

Keitaro sat up, rubbing his stomach. "That still hurts, you know!"

"Shut up!" Motoko jumped over the couch and swung the sword down onto his head. The resulting blow connected like a hammer rather than a sword, driving Keitaro face-first into the wood panel flooring of the living room.

Su was amazed at Keitaro's durability. "Oh! That's so cool!"

Keitaro groaned as Motoko attempted to saw the sword into his skull, and hardly even cut any hairs. "No… there is clearly something I'm missing!"

Getting up, she kicked him in the head and stormed off. "This isn't over, Urashima!"

As she left the room with the same swiftness she appeared, Keitaro got up and shook his head. "She hits like a truck."

"She's about as subtle as one, too," Naru quipped.

"I suppose I should go ask Haruka about it, where is she anyway?" Keitaro looked around again. "And wasn't this house a wreck?"

"Haruka went back to the tea shop, said something about a fax from Granny, and the house is intact because of Su."

Su grinned big. "Yep, this house utilizes Smart Armor, it's self-repairing!"

Keitaro blinked a few times. "Wait, isn't that from a video game or something?"

"Yep! The Strike games, my favorite!"

"You invented it."

"Yep!"

"To work with a wooden house."

"Uh huh!"

Ah, that's why the Momolese were so terrifying.

"Ah, Naru-sempai, Su-chan, dinner's ready," Shinobu meekly called from the dining room.

Naru nodded. "Okay, I'll go get Kitsune and Motoko-"

"I'm not hungry!" Motoko yelled from another part of the house.

"Guess I'll just get Kitsune, then."

As Naru headed off, Keitaro looked nervously to Shinobu. "Ah, sorry about before-"

Her face flushing, Shinobu scurried off to the kitchen without a word. Watching her go, his face fell. "Oh, okay."

"Shinobu-chan is shy, don't worry about her!" Su reassured him as she hugged his arm. "Come, come! You'll like her cooking!"

Keitaro visibly relaxed and allowed Su to lead him off to the dining room. He hadn't eaten since he left for the Inn, and he was just beginning to realize how hungry he was. Within minutes the residents sans Motoko were at the dinner table with their guest, and Keitaro was not only happy to have some food, but also happy to have some normal conversation that did not involve people trying to murder him.

"You're trying to get into Toudai, too?" Keitaro asked in surprise.

"Going to, not trying," Naru said ever so humbly. "I'm the number one student in Japan going by test scores and class averages. That entrance exam will be a cakewalk for me."

Keitaro grew starry-eyed. He had heard of the number one student in Japan, even seen pictures of her, a girl who smashed all courses with the ease of a Supercomputer, the "Strongest Genius" as she was known with hushed whispers. "Wait, you're that Narusegawa?!"

Naru held her hand palm down under her chin and let out a smug laugh. "Could I be anyone else?"

"Ah, so humble," Kitsune cooed as Su snickered.

It was still impossible for him to wrap his head around it. "But I've seen pictures, and you're so plain and ugly, and those baggy clothes make you look kind of overweight."

Naru stopped preening herself and gave Keitaro a pointed look, and he blanched. "Ah, s-sorry, sorry, I didn't mean any offense, honest!"

Indestructible, yes, but being punched through a house hurt about as much as one would imagine being punched through a house would.

Kitsune grinned. "Well that just goes to show your 'disguise' works, eh? No one would expect an utter bombshell underneath that frumpy disguise and dreadful misuse of makeup." She turned her attention to Keitaro and grinned. "You can attest, right?"

A blush crawled across his face. "Well…" He needed to change the subject, fast. "What about you, Konno-san? Are you going to college?"

"I make too much money to even remotely consider the need for a higher education."

"Despite always being late on rent," Naru jabbed.

Kitsune pouted. "Hey, I still pay don't I?"

"What do you do, if you don't mind asking?"

She turned towards Keitaro. "Oh, freelance writing and the occasional wet work for folks down the hill–small stuff to discourage 'unwanted business' from setting up in town, you know?" She smirked and threw the ball back into his court. "So why are you so intent on getting into Toudai? I get that you've already passed on the rooftop swan dive option, but there are other schools."

Keitaro's blush returned with a vengeance. "Ah, it's embarrassing. When I was little, I made a promise to meet with a girl at Toudai."

The mood at the table went from jovial to surprised. Naru stared at him at amazement. "You're still trying to get into Toudai on a promise?"

A blush splashed across Keitaro's face. "Well, she was a girl I really liked. We used to play every time we met here at the Inn, and we'd always talk about the future and how much fun it'd be to go to Toudai together. So, we made a promise to get into Toudai together." He sighed wistfully. "But I made that promise years ago, she probably wouldn't remember it. And even if she did, I've failed to get in two times, I doubt she'd wait for me."

Kitsune was about to wholeheartedly agree on account that it was the sappiest, most immature thing ever–when Naru slammed her palms on the table, cracking the wood under her hands. Kitsune turned her attention to Naru, and found that her best friend was overcome with emotion.

"She'd wait for you! A romantic promise like that, no girl would ever forget it!" Naru erupted with fire in her eyes.

"Oh God, he flipped her switch," Kitsune muttered.

Keitaro was struck by Naru's passion. "R-really?"

"Definitely!" Naru held up a clenched fist. "Hell, I'll tutor you so you can get into Toudai! I can't bear to see a dream like that go unfulfilled!"

Being tutored by the number one student in Japan. Suddenly, the suffering he endured today was entirely worth it. Getting up, he clasped Naru's hands with his own. "R-really? You'd do that for me?"

"Of course!" Naru declared. "Besides, I feel bad for what happened earlier, it'd only be right if I helped you out wouldn't it?"

Tears formed in Keitaro's eyes. Was this woman an angel sent to show him the light? There was no other explanation for her kindness! "N-Naru-san… you're far too kind!"

"I'm the kindest person you'll ever meet!" Naru replied proudly.

Kitsune chuckled. "Your humility knows no bounds, Naru."

"Yay! We're going to make a happy ending!" Su cheered.

Shinobu looked a little disappointed, but that evaporated when she heard metallic-sounding footsteps coming from the living room. Turning towards it, her eyes grew wide and she quickly got up from her chair with a squeak of fright.

Turning towards the source of the new racket, Naru, Keitaro, and Kitsune gave pause as Motoko walked into the room, decked head to toe in a body-encasing powered exo-suit. On her hip she carried her sword, and on her back were a total of ten folded up binders that looked like they carried even more weapons.

"Su, what's that?" Naru asked.

Su smiled. "Oh, Momo found my powered armor!"

"Su, why were you building a powered armor?" Naru asked levelly.

"Well, I was reading Linebarrels and I thought Vardant was so cool so I-"

"Nevermind!" Naru turned to Motoko. "Motoko-chan. Why are you wearing a Molmolese powered armor?"

"Why would I not?" Motoko returned as she turned her gaze towards Keitaro.

Keitaro gulped. "Okay, Motoko… can we be completely rational about this-?"

"Rationality is running screaming out of the house and so should you," Kitsune interjected.

Motoko nodded assent and began to draw her sword. "It is sound advice, Urashima."

"Motoko!"

Mid-draw, Motoko looked towards Shinobu, who had stood up and pulled a red handkerchief from her pocket. Holding it tightly in her hand, she pointed at Motoko. "Please don't make a mess in the house, Su may be able to fix it but I still have to clean it up."

At Shinobu's request, Motoko resheathed her sword and looked down at Keitaro. "Very well."

She grabbed him and began to drag him towards the front door. As he was pulled along, he looked up at her and gulped. "There's no way I'm going to talk you out of this, am I?"

Motoko shook her head.

Letting out a sigh, Keitaro allowed himself to be dragged to the door, and then thrown onto the ground outside it. Sitting up, he stared up at her as she unsheathed her sword and threw the scabbard away.

"My approach was all wrong." she admitted, "In order to harm you, it will not take a single blow but many to a single area, weakening it until it is finally cut. With your durability, no single sword could hope to succeed in that task."

Spinning her sword in her hand, Motoko caught and then threw it straight into the sky, very high. Keitaro watched the sword disappear into the twilight sky, before he saw the large binders on this armored Motoko's back spread open, revealing holsters for two swords underneath each unfolded shield. Motoko drew a sword for each hand.

"So I will try twenty-one."

Motoko waved the swords through the air, her ki causing dust and leaves to kick up around her. As Keitaro watched, the slow moving blades glided uninterrupted through the leaves, slicing them neatly in two. He got up onto his feet, and held up his hands. "Motoko, wait-"

The air instantly vacated his lungs as Motoko stabbed him in the stomach with one of the swords. Rather than go through, the blade snapped in two from her unstoppable force meeting his immovable flesh. Spinning around, Motoko slashed the same spot with the other sword, that blade snapping as well.

Keitaro would've gone flying at this point, but Motoko grabbed him by the back of his head and yanked him back into the ground, cracking the cobblestones as he bounced off them. Two more swords were broken on his stomach, driving him back into the ground and creating a crater underneath him.

Two more swords caught him under his arms, and he was thrown straight up into the air as Naru and Kitsune ran out to the front door.

"Oh shit," Kitsune blurted as Motoko threw the swords in her hands up at Keitaro. Both struck home, snapping in half followed by two more blades. Tumbling through the air, Keitaro landed on his back, arms spread and coughing loudly.

Motoko shot straight to Keitaro and punted him into a tree. As he bounced off it, Motoko unleashed a double slash that cut through the tree behind Keitaro even as the swords broke. Drawing two more swords, she spun like a top, repeatedly hitting him before she broke both to send him crashing into the ground in front of Naru and Kitsune.

Landing, Motoko panted as she drew two more swords. "Almost…"

Keitaro, clutching his stomach, looked up at Motoko. Durable as he was, being hit still hurt, and her hits were especially painful. "A-are you done yet? How many swords was that?"

Motoko tensed. "Are you mocking me?!"

"No, I really want this to be over!" Keitaro yelped before a sword was broken on his face. "ACK!"

"Shut up!" Motoko slammed another sword against his stomach, and the blade broke.

She caught him with another sword and slammed him back down, the blade snapped with a crack. "All that you should concern yourself with is making peace!"

"Motoko, stop it all you're doing is hurting him!" Naru yelled.

Kicking him, Motoko drew two more blades. "Good! Succumb to the pain, Urashima!"

She lunged for him again and uppercut him, lifting him onto his feet. Her arms became blurs as she repeatedly slashed and stabbed him with both swords, cracks and chips appearing all over the blades before both shattered. As the metal shards scattered around her, one cutting across her cheek, she drew the last sword.

"Die so I may free my sister!"

Keitaro grew wide-eyed at Motoko's words, just before the sword's blade drove into his stomach and left a trail of sparks as she dragged the edge across it. The blade, now pieces of molten slag, scattered in an arc away from her as she reached up and caught her original sword.

"SHINMEI RYU SECRET TECHNIQUE!"

Electricity suddenly bathed the blade, as she lifted the sword above her head.

"_RAIMEIKEN!"_

Motoko swung the blade down on Keitaro… and there was a fizzle and pop as the blade simply broke in two atop Keitaro's head, half of the blade bouncing off the cobblestone behind him and then down the stairs.

Panting heavily, Motoko stared in disbelief as Keitaro staggered a bit and did little else. She looked at her broken sword, and just watched as what was left slipped out of her hands and clattered onto the ground.

"Impossible… I… I just… no…" She shook her head, and fell to one knee. "My sword… there should be nothing it cannot cut…" She pounded her hand on the hilt of the broken blade. "It can even cut konnyaku jelly!"

Kitsune shrugged her shoulders when Naru gave her a puzzled look regarding such an oddly specific item.

She glared at him. "I cannot kill you with a sword…" Her anger turned to despair, and she bowed her head, tears running down her cheeks. "… How am I supposed to kill that awful man, now?"

Keitaro fell onto his butt in front of her, panting to catch his own breath. "M-Motoko-san… are you trying to save your sister from something?"

Motoko kept weeping. "I could only be allowed, by my family, to kill the man my older sister married if I were to slay you… but that… that's truly impossible."

"So, this was all so you could just get your big sister back." Keitaro nodded slowly. "… I'm sorry I couldn't die, then."

She looked up at him, surprised at the honesty in his voice. "I-I don't need fake sympathy from you!"

"But I mean it," Keitaro said. "I have a sister too, a little one, and if she were in a situation I didn't like, I'd be angry as you are… even angrier maybe… and I'd do anything for her to save her."

He clenched his fists some. "Absolutely anything…"

"Tsuruko Aoyama married out of love, though," Haruka said as she reached the top of the stairs, carrying the broken piece of Motoko's sword. "Motoko's jealous outburst upset a lot of people, Tsuruko included, so she gave her the task of killing Keitaro as punishment for the slight."

Motoko winced at Haruka's cold words.

Keitaro gave Haruka an annoyed look. "And no one consulted me about this?"

"I was going to, but you arrived before I could call you up about it," Haruka replied.

"Oh." Keitaro looked back to Motoko, and scooted over to her. "I'm sorry Motoko-san, I really am."

"Don't you dare pity me…" Keitaro then surprised Motoko by capturing her in a hug. "Ah?!"

"I don't have anything against you, and I understand. You were afraid of losing your sister and went a little overboard, but I think that's normal."

"Threatening to kill family members in an enraged tizzy is handled kind of differently when you're a skilled swordsman, Keitaro," Haruka pointed out.

"Not my point, Auntie," Keitaro replied.

Haruka lightly bopped him atop the head with a stack of papers in her other hand as she walked by. "Don't call me that, I'm only 28."

"At any rate, Motoko, because no one else got hurt, I forgive you." He pulled back from her. "No harm, no foul… right?

Motoko couldn't believe it, after all her attempts to kill him, this man was just forgiving her like it was nothing to him at all! Such compassion, such unmoving strength… was he… was he a Living Buddha?!

Su then ran outside. "Hey! I found the emergency release for the powered armor!"

She held up a remote and pressed a button. Immediately, the armored exoskeleton dissolved into a puddle of nanomachines, leaving her completely naked in his embrace.

Kitsune was impressed. "Can you believe that is exactly what I hoped would happen?"

Naru buried her face in her palm. "Oh Jesus…"

Motoko sat frozen, aghast.

Keitaro sat frozen, amazed.

"KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" One extremely powerful punch to the face later, and Keitaro was hurtling across the sky towards Hinata City.

Haruka watched him go, as Motoko immediately turned her wrath onto Su. "I hope he comes back."

"SUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!" Motoko roared as she chased the Momolese girl around the group while brandishing a broken sword.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

"He'd need a hell of a reason to want to," Naru said with a dejected sigh.

Haruka held out the papers she held. "It just so happens, I have a reason right here."

Naru and Kitsune looked at the papers, and their eyes immediately widened–well, Naru's did at least–when they were presented with a deed to the Hinata-sou and the very land it sat on. All of it signed over to the ownership of Keitaro Urashima.

Reserving as much composure as she could, Naru responded:

"Well! That would do it."

* * *

A/N: I hope that was a little different.


	3. Today was a good day

Disclaimer: Ladies and gentlemen. Do you understand the implications of this? Hours–literally hours of time–lost to the constant flow of writing, reading, rage, repeating. Is there anything to gain from this? No. Is there anything to feel from this? No. But what is it that keeps us here, writing, reading, and raging this cycle endlessly?

We are all fucking insane.

* * *

Standing outside the Hinata-sou as its tenants carried Keitaro and Motoko inside to tend to them, Haruka was on her phone with her Grandmother and the current owner of the Hinata-sou, Hina Urashima. "He hasn't gotten into Tokyo University, and his parents kicked him out. He's got nowhere else to go, so I'm going to let him stay here at the inn."

"They threw him out over failing an entrance exam? I'll have to talk to them about being so rash, Kei-chan is special after all," Hina replied. "Speaking of, how has he fared against Motoko?"

"She can't do any real damage to him, though definitely not out of a lack of trying."

Hina let out a chuckle. "I can only hope she tires herself out and learns from this. How long do you suppose that'll take?"

"She is as stubborn as Tsuruko and Naoto combined, Granny. It could take a while."

"Oho! It might take some time then, who knows maybe he'll wear her down like Naoto wore Tsuruko." Hina let out an amused, if witch-like, cackle at that. "Regardless of that, if you like, Keitaro can stay at the Inn until his parents come back around, or he gets into Tokyo University."

Haruka hummed, a short and uncertain sound usually associated with the normally stoic woman. Hina caught onto it immediately.

"What troubles you, my little one?"

"Well, this is his second time failing to get in. I'm not sure how long it's going to actually take him."

There was a brief pause, and then, "Did you say his second attempt?"

"Ah, yes Granny."

A much longer silence followed, before a much softer, warmer laugh from Hina caught Haruka off-guard. "Granny?"

"Haruka-chan, is your fax machine hooked up?"

"Of course, why?"

"I'm going to give Keitaro the inn."

"Oh, all right," Haruka replied just a second before what Hina said registered.

"WHAT?!" Motoko yelled as Haruka showed the papers Hina faxed her to all the tenants of the Hinata-sou, gathered in the living room. "S-she's just giving him the inn, b-but-!"

"Granny was very clear about this," Haruka replied. "She wants Keitaro to take up ownership of the inn and manage the dormitory as the new landlord."

"But this is a _girl's dormitory!_" Motoko protested, "You can't let some young man fresh out of High School run it!"

"He ain't that fresh out," Naru noted.

"Sorry, Granny's say on this is final. If you want to take it up with her, go ahead."

Motoko cringed, and bitterly acquiesced as she looked away from Haruka.

"Look on the bright side," Kitsune chimed, "At least you'll have plenty of chances to figure out how to kill him."

Motoko looked down at her broken sword, laying on the living room table, and then glared at Kitsune.

"It works out for everyone," Haruka said, "I can focus more on managing our jobs, Keitaro has a place to live and study to get into Toudai, Naru has a study partner, and Motoko can work towards killing him."

"And Su can study Keitaro and find out how he cannot die!" the Molmolese girl cheered.

"And Kitsune has an actual man to use her wiles on to get out of paying the rent," Naru joked.

And Shinobu, who quietly fidgeted to the side, had a really cute boy she could ogle, not that she'd say such a thing aloud.

"Though, this is all assuming he even wants to stay. He may be indestructible but he doesn't exactly scream 'Masochist', to me," Kitsune noted.

"For the kind of money he's getting out of this? He'd be stupid not to," Naru argued. "Besides, if he wants to get into Toudai for his promised girl, I'm sure he'd endure something as minor as Motoko trying to kill him."

"Is this some kind of a joke to you?!" Motoko snapped at her.

Naru grinned. "Yes, it's hilarious."

Haruka let out a hum. "Yeah, about that… Granny told me who the promised girl is."

The entire room went silent as the tenants looked at Haruka in surprise, and it stayed silent until Keitaro finally arrived from his walk back up the hill. When everyone looked at him, he took a step back nervously.

"… What?"

Haruka pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and took a drag from it. "Keitaro, a few things: First, Granny wants to give you the Dormitory, the land it sits on, and all assets attached."

Keitaro nodded. "Okay?"

It took a few seconds for it to sink in.

"She wants to _WHAT?!"_

"We're as surprised as you, but what Granny says goes, you know how it works."

Keitaro nodded. "Y-yeah, I know but… why?"

"Spite, mainly. Granny wasn't too hot about your parents throwing you out, so she decided to give you the castle."

Keitaro reached up and rubbed the back of his head as he tried to overcome his disbelief. "She didn't have to, this is really a lot…"

"She really didn't," Motoko muttered.

Ignoring Motoko, Haruka walked over to him and put her arm around his shoulders. "Don't worry about it. You have a place to stay now, so you should be able to focus on getting into Toudai with your promised girl just fine."

"Ah… yes!" Naru quickly said. "And guess what, Granny even knows who the promised girl is!"

Keitaro swung right back from overwhelmed to shock. "Wait, she does?!"

"She told me," Haruka replied.

Was today really happening? Keitaro would pinch himself, but he had plenty enough pain confirm it was real. "Well, who is it?"

Haruka held out her hand, gesturing directly to Naru. "Meet your promised girl, Naru Narusegawa."

And once again the room became quiet… for all of a half-second before all Hell broke loose:

"WHAT?!"

**Love Hina: The Merry Killers  
Chapter 3: Today was a Good Day**

Keitaro and Naru sat on opposite ends of a table in what was now the former's bedroom, trying to absorb the unexpected revelations that came raining down on their heads like so many blows from Motoko onto Keitaro's. Naru was staring at a picture Haruka had produced as proof, hidden away in the Annex of Hinata Inn, while Keitaro was awkwardly trying to find something to say. He had hoped that his promised girl would be someone amazing when he had finally reunited with her, but he had never imagined his expectations being so completely blown out of the water.

"I must've been two years old when I made that promise," Naru quietly said, "So of course I wouldn't remember anything like that."

The picture she held was of herself as a toddler, playing in a sandbox with a five year old Keitaro, and another girl Haruka identified as "Mutsumi-chan". She looked from it to Keitaro. "This is so weird, isn't it?"

"I remember Mutsumi-chan," Keitaro said a bit awkwardly. "I thought she was my promised girl…"

"I wouldn't blame you for that; it'd make a ton more sense."

Keitaro sighed and rested his chin on his folded arms. "This is so weird. A few hours ago I was worried if I was going to be sleeping out on the street, and now I own our clan's biggest and most important property and I've been reunited with literally the girl of my dreams."

Naru blushed faintly at that. "Sheesh, even after I punched you through the house?"

"Eh, no harm no foul, you know?"

She laughed. "I suppose when it doesn't bother you, you don't even have to turn the other cheek, huh?"

"Not really, no. If someone wants to beat me up or something, I just let them until it's out of their system."

"That must've gotten you a lot of friends at school."

"Huh?"

"If I could take hits like you, I would've protected all the weak kids from bullies and stuff like that."

Keitaro's gaze briefly grew distant, looking past Naru and all but through the wall behind her before it refocused. "Oh, yeah I made a ton of friends from being so tough… it's actually why I ended up failing the entrance exam the first time."

"Oh no, I am so super popular, how can I study with everyone inviting me to parties and hanging out?" Naru playfully teased.

It was Keitaro's turn to blush. "That's not what happened!"

"It totally was," Naru rightly accused.

Keitaro's blush darkened, before he looked away. "Okay, it was…"

"So what about your other failures?"

"Well, it turned out even without a world of distractions, I don't test well."

Naru beamed. "Is that so? Well if you're aiming for Toudai you can't be that bad, let's see your tests!"

Keitaro visibly cringed. "I don't know…"

Naru tempted fate. "Come on, you're not completely incompetent, are you?"

And so…

"GOOD LORD HOW CAN A TOUDAI HOPEFUL BE SO _BAD?!"_

Keitaro cringed as Naru stared in awestruck horror at the test scores laid out before her. "49?! 33?! 19?! You actually did _worse_ on your subsequent exams!"

Part of the horror was the realization that she had enthusiastically made this abysmal nightmare her own in a fit of passion. "I just… wow man, if you're going to get into Toudai, you can't do whatever it is you've been doing, because oh shit it is _wrong."_

Flushed with embarrassment, Keitaro looked away. "Well it's a good thing I have the best possible tutor in the world, right?"

Naru was actually shivering as she looked at math scores. This man… he would need more than the best possible tutor in the world, he would need God, Buddha, and Kamen Rider if he wanted even the faintest hope to turn around. But then again, maybe it was meant to happen this way.

"Oh man…" Setting down the exams, she shook her head and laughed.

Keitaro looked up at her. "What?"

"What are the odds, Keitaro? I'm like three years younger than you. You make a promise with me to go to Toudai, and then fail two times to get in. You get kicked out of your house after your second failure, and end up living here with the person you promised, who is in her last year of High School and preparing to take the next entrance exam. I am the absolute top student in Japan, and probably the only person in this entire country who could tutor you to have a halfway chance at passing the Toudai Entrance Exam."

That sat and simmered on Keitaro's thoughts for a moment, before he let out his own laugh. "That's absurd!"

"I know, right?" Getting up, Naru crawled around the table and sat next to him. "What if you had passed any of those exams or had just given up on Toudai? Would you have even come here?"

Keitaro shrugged his shoulders. "Not really, no."

After all, he came here for the peace and quiet the inn of his memories had.

Naru leaned against him, and he suddenly became very aware of her proximity. He looked to her, as she looked to him.

"Do you think it means something?"

Keitaro pondered that for a few moments, and put his arm around her. When she didn't object to it, he pulled her more intimately against him, and she escalated their intimacy even further–climbing onto his lap facing him.

He began to caress her sides, as he looked up at her. "It could mean something."

"I would like it to." She removed his glasses, before taking off her own.

"We just met though."

"I prefer reunited, it's more romantic that way." Naru kissed Keitaro with that, and he unhesitantly returned it.

* * *

As the couple in the adjacent room got hot and heavy for the coupling, Kitsune sat back from the hole she cut into her bedroom wall to spy on them. Smirking, she quietly got up and headed for her door. "Konno withdraws coolly."

She made her way back to the living room, and was surprised to see Haruka sitting on the couch with her arms draped across the back and a cigarette smoldering between her lips.

"So how are they getting along?" She asked without looking directly at the foxy lady.

"Last I saw, Naru was cleaning Keitaro's tonsils with her tongue, so I guess well enough?"

Haruka did look at her now. "Really?"

Kitsune nodded. "I don't blame her, she's a sucker for romantic stuff like promises and long-lost lovers." She sat down next to Haruka and gave her a pointed look, complete with her perpetually closed brown eyes opening slightly. "I mean, it's right out of a story and all that jazz, you seriously could make it up."

Haruka smirked at that. "I wouldn't do that to either of them."

"Would Granny?"

"Hell no."

Kitsune slowly nodded, while her eyes opened wider. "Because if you or Granny were just lying to keep Keitaro around-"

Haruka was honestly offended. "Is this really bothering you?"

"Naru's my best friend, excuse my concern."

"And Keitaro's my cousin, and Granny's favorite after me. She wouldn't play with his feelings like that."

Kitsune continued her pointed stare, before her eyes shut again. "Fair enough, but how do you suppose Motoko's going to deal with him and Naru banging?"

"Hm… who knows? There's nothing she can do to Keitaro, and there sure as hell isn't anything she can do to Naru. Maybe she'll give up."

"There goes everything being so convenient again, and you wonder why I'm so suspicious of it all."

"If this was all a made-up conspiracy, you'd likely not know it at all or you'd be allowed to think you did. Just remember, no matter how well you play the game, fire burns those stupid enough to try and catch it barehanded." Haruka smirked.

"My, my, how scary… we sit shoulder to shoulder at the same table and it's easy to forget just how devilish someone can be."

"Cheeky little brat. Answer me this, would you play that kind of game with the most dangerous people on Earth?"

Kitsune pouted at that. "I suppose honesty is the best policy to those who can turn you into a cloud of red mist with a firm backhand."

Haruka tapped off the ash from the end of her cigarette. "I want Keitaro to be happy, Naru too, all of you really. Being so carefree comes at a premium in this family."

"Ugh, tell me about it," Kitsune lamented.

"That's okay though, if you don't work for something even a little, you become a conceited little shit." Haruka reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a folder. "On that note, we've been given a job."

Kitsune nodded. "Ah, the real reason you're here I see." She read it, and her eyes opened wide. "Oh my God."

"We've been asked to be completely thorough on this one; you don't even have to bring me back anything to clean up." Haruka took a drag from her cigarette. "Frankly, I don't want you to."

Lowering the folder and shutting her eyes again, Kitsune frowned. "All right then, I'm using Red."

Haruka let out a slightly longer sigh than that. "… Do what you have to do."

* * *

Lying on his back with a relaxed smile, Keitaro was still trying to process how amazing his day had been–savage attacks from Motoko notwithstanding. Naru was lying next to him, her head rested on his shoulder as she snuggled against him. "Everything about today has been just perfect…"

Naru nuzzled him just below his ear. "Even the part where Motoko kept trying to kill you?"

"No harm, no foul, remember?" He ran his hand along the curves of her body, and she trembled as she sighed against his neck. "This was worth it, though."

"It had better," Naru purred before she got as serious as she could in the post-coital glow. "Don't get too comfy though, starting tomorrow I'm going to work you like a dog until you can pass the entrance exam. No man of mine is going to break his promise to get into Toudai by failing to get in a fourth time, got it?"

"Yeah, yeah…" He kissed Naru, and hugged her as drowsiness crept over him.

"_You slut."_

His eyes grew wide and he looked around the still unfamiliar room. There was nothing but the darkness and Naru cuddled to him. Closing his eyes, he let out a shaky breath as he tried to relax, but he could feel the needle-like teeth sinking his head and neck.

"_You belong to me, remember?"_

* * *

A/N: Oh dear, maybe it's too different now. Oh well!


	4. Vermillion Part 1

Disclaimer: This is a story not for the faint of heart. It's not for the faint of a lot of internal organs actually; it is recommended that you put on a ballistics vest before sitting down to read. It could very well save your life.

Wear a helmet, too.

* * *

"I do not like that we are going on a mission so suddenly, my head still hurts," Motoko complained to Kitsune as they rode aboard an unmarked and unusually quiet helicopter flying over the mountainous terrain of the Nagano Prefecture.

She and Kitsune sat opposite one another in the cabin, dressed head to toe in woodland print camouflaged combat gear. Motoko carried a replacement sword over her lap, while across Kitsune's lap was a sniper rifle, an M24.

"Well, I figured you could stand to get out of the house, what with an icky boy now living in it." That earned Kitsune a death-filled glare from Motoko, but she chuckled it right off. "Sorry, sorry, you make it too easy, you know? Anyway, we're just making sure no one gets away; Red's going to be doing the real work, so take it as an opportunity to relax. It's supposed to be cool and clear, perfect for stargazing."

"Oh how nice, I should've brought my telescope," Motoko grumbled.

"I actually packed it up before we left, it's in the cargo compartment."

Motoko blinked in surprise. "What, really?"

Kitsune nodded. "Come on, today must've been pretty shitty, so let's all have some fun tonight and not just Red, all right?"

Sometimes Kitsune reminded Motoko why she was in charge of controlling their jobs on the field... and generally controlling the clash of personalities in the house. "... Thank you, Konno."

"Think nothing of it, it's what a big sister does, you know?"

"So, you haven't explained it to me, but what happened? Why are we dispatching Red to dispatch these hooligans?"

Kitsune frowned at that. "It's a disgusting mess. See, there's this gang, the Z-Boys, who like to think they control much of the Nagano's roads, and thanks to some money slipped under the table to the chief of the Nagano Police Headquarters, they actually do."

Motoko nodded. "Ah, police corruption."

"Normally this is something you let carry on, because let's face it... it's either organized crime or disorganized crime, you know? But these Z-Boys are runnin' around like bandits with tricked out cars and bikes, running people off the road, running people over, raiding the smaller towns, and basically raping, pillaging, and murdering their way into controlling the entire prefecture."

The Aoyama Man-Slayer narrowed her eyes. "So the Emperor signed their death warrants."

Kitsune pulled out the file Haruka had given her, and drew from it a stack of papers. "Complete with his personal seal."

"And the Nagano Police Chief?"

Kitsune pulled a particular paper out of the stack and handed it to her. "I wanted it to be a surprise but here, you can have him after Red's done."

Motoko looked at the paper, and actually grinned. Her headache was suddenly gone.

"Konno-san, Aoyama-san," the helicopter pilot called, "I'm about to set us down."

Kitsune got up and moved from the cabin to the cockpit of the helicopter. Her eyes opening, she could see their landing zone and beyond it what looked like a series of bonfires in the distance. "There go our targets, time to awaken the beast."

She turned around and looked over to Shinobu, who was fast asleep next to Motoko.

**Love Hina: The Merry Killers  
Chapter 4: Vermillion Pt. 1**

"Shinobu-chan! It's time to wake up!" Su called out as she slammed open Shinobu Maehara's bedroom door. "It's time to get ready for school!"

Shinobu opened her eyes, abruptly awakening from a dreamless yet refreshing sleep. Sitting up, she stretched and looked at her clock. She grew wide-eyed with fright. "Oh no I overslept, I have to make breakfast!"

"That's okay! Narunaru already did!" Su reassured her. "Come on and get ready before it gets cold!"

Naru made breakfast? Well that was good. Better her than Motoko's cooking (nutritious but bland), Kitsune's (fried, fatty, and slathered with alcohol-based sauces), or Su's (bananas all dey, erry dey). Quickly, Shinobu climbed out of bed to get ready, only to wince when she felt a faint pain in her stomach.

"Nngh..." She lifted up her pajama top and looked down to see several bruises across her stomach and chest. She let out a sigh, and looked at herself in the mirror. "... Oh... Red must've had a wild night."

* * *

It was a cool, clear early-autumn night. One of the few before it started to get really cold, and so among the last to really spend the night partying. For the Z-Boys, a gang over a hundred strong, tonight they were going to make the most of it. Everyone was together for the celebration; they brought their cars, their women, and more than a few guns to shoot off into the night to celebrate being alive and being so gangsta.

"Yo, Masuda! Gimme another beer!" A small-framed and heavily tattooed twenty-three year old man who went by the name Sano ordered as he sat by his heavily modified and vibrantly painted red, white, and black compact car. He was the leader of the Z-Boys, and despite his small stature, he was a horrible man who commanded a great deal of fear and respect from not only the populous of Nagano, but his own gang.

"Hey Sano, get this man," the indicated Masuda, a heavyset man standing taller than Sano, said over the blaring J-Rap as he walked over with two cans of beer. "I hear over in Otari they started setting up spike strips on the roads at night to try to snag us."

Taking the beer he ordered, he knocked it back before surveying his small kingdom. "Tomorrow find out whose idea it was, and then I'll go say what's up, myself."

"I already know. It's the principal of the high school there."

Sano's brow furrowed. "Otari, ain't that kid Ueno ran over from there?"

He looked over by one of the several bonfires burning among the tricked out cars. "YO UENO! DIDN'T YOU RUN OVER SOME KID IN OTARI?!"

"Hell yeah, I crushed his head like a fucking melon!" A bespectacled, goatee-sporting punk shouted back, before laughter erupted around him.

Masuda laughed as well, setting his own beer on the hood of Sano's car. "Oh shit, son..."

This didn't escape his leader's notice. "Masuda man... you know the rules, right?"

The heavyset thug looked to his leader, still chuckling. "What?"

"Don't put shit on my car."

Before Masuda could even offer an apology, or try to remove the beer from the hood of the stylish ride, Sano got up and blasted him in the chest with a sawed-off shotgun, dropping his underling where he stood. The partying stopped, though the music didn't, as all eyes went to Sano. Walking over to his car, he picked up the offending beer can, and poured what was left onto the now very dead Masuda.

Sano then looked at the crowd, and put on the goofiest grin. "I told that motherfucker not to put shit on my car."

The rest of the Z-Boys burst into hysterical laughter.

"Hey, who's the kid?" Someone near Sano called out over the laughter and the music. Glancing over towards the person who called out, Sano did a double take when he saw the kid in question. It was a girl in a red dress and hood with a white apron, and was obscured by the shadows of the trees.

She was slowly walking towards the party.

Sano stepped over Masuda's cooling corpse and walked towards the edge of the clearing. "Yo, Red Riding Hood, you lookin' for Grandma's house or something?"

The girl lowered the slow burning match. "I'm not Little Red Riding Hood, I'm The Little Match Girl."

Sano blinked. "What?"

"It's a very sad story, with a very unhappy ending."

Sano pointed his shotgun at her and grinned. "I like those kinds of stories."

Laughter erupted among the Z-Boys as several pointed their own guns at the kid, pistols and shotguns mainly, although they had nothing more dangerous than a machine pistol.

She threw the match behind her, and a tremendous blaze suddenly erupted, starting backwards and then suddenly spreading to circle the large clearing and the Z-Boys. The light of the flames properly illuminated her, and Sano nearly dropped his shotgun when he saw the M240B Machine gun she carried in her other hand.

Red grinned broadly, as she lifted the weapon to take into both hands, and pointed it at the Z-Boys.

"I do, too."

* * *

"Oh, good morning Su-chan, good morning Shinobu-chan!" Naru called cheerfully as Su and Shinobu arrived at the dining room. The other tenants were present as well, but not their new landlord, which Shinobu noted with disappointment.

"Good morning, Naru-sempai. You're so cheerful this morning!" Normally she was way more laid back, or up to her nose in books.

"Why wouldn't she be?" Kitsune asked Shinobu with a smirk as she contemplated drinking the coffee in front of her or just going back to bed.

That was right, the new landlord was someone special to Naru. Shinobu looked around for him. "Where is... ah... Keitaro-san?"

"He doesn't have anywhere to be today, so I guess he's sleeping in."

Kitsune grinned. "What tired him out?"

Naru blushed brilliantly. "Kitsune!"

Motoko, who had been also somewhere halfway between asleep and awake, suddenly snapped right into awake with rage. "Senpai, you didn't!"

Shinobu grew crestfallen, while Su gasped with glee at the scandal. "Narunaru and Keikei mated~!"

Naru tried to move the goalposts. "Were you spying on us?!"

They were bolted in, however, as Kitsune smiled gamely. "Now, now, I left before it got hot and heavy. I'm not a total cad."

Motoko was still in disbelief. "You actually did it?!"

Naru looked to Motoko. "I'm a grown woman, I can do what I want."

"You're a third year in High School!" Motoko snapped back. "You let that man take advantage of you-"

"I was the aggressor, you know."

"She was," Kitsune testified.

Naru looked at Kitsune. "Seriously? Not cool!"

Motoko got up, picking up her replacement sword. "I'm going to castrate him."

"No you're not!" Naru warned Motoko as she stepped up and stared her down.

Motoko wasn't about to be intimidated. "I am obligated to try. Your sleeping with him has not exempted him from my task."

Naru intensified her glare. "Seems like nothing has lately, hasn't it?"

Kitsune got up, and placed her hands on their chests. "All right girls, let's be nice. It's too early to be yelling at each other and brandishing weapons."

She took this opportunity to squeeze their breasts, eliciting yelps from both of them. "Kitsune!"

Laughing, Kitsune returned to the table.

Taking her own seat at the table, Shinobu sighed quietly as Naru and Motoko's brush with confrontation was derailed with sexual harassment, before looking at plate. Wait, when did they have a waffle iron?

"Waffles?" Shinobu asked.

Naru looked over. "Oh, Keitaro brought a waffle iron with him, apparently he likes them a lot."

Shinobu looked back at her waffles and her eyes began to sparkle. To hell with what he and Naru got up to, she and he were truly meant to be. As she dug into the waffles, Naru and Motoko returned to their chairs and also began to eat, the tension diffused.

Naru brought on a most-welcome change of subject. "So why are you two so bleary eyed?"

"We had a late job," Kitsune replied, "Cleaning up a mess in Nagano."

"Nagano?"

"Yeah, we had to fly out there. It wasn't anything too heinous, just a gang that was paying off the Prefecture Police to do whatever it wanted on the roads."

Naru frowned. "Ooh... the entire police force?"

"Just the chief and a few of his staff that had their palms greased to look away."

"What's the cover story going to be on that one?"

Kitsune shrugged her shoulders. "Who knows? That's not our job."

"What's not?" Keitaro asked as he walked in.

Shinobu looked up and blushed at the sight of Keitaro, before tearing faster into her waffles.

"Spin-doctoring, Kei-chan. Motoko, Shinobu, and I had a job out in Nagano last night," Kitsune explained.

Naru glared at Kitsune. "You took Shinobu out there?"

Keitaro looked over at her. "Shinobu?"

Shinobu slammed her fork and knife down on her clean plate. "I'm done! Breakfast was good Sempai I'm going to school now, Su come on!"

"But Su hasn't finished her bananas-EEP!"

She grabbed Su and ran for the door. "You can eat them on the way!"

Keitaro blinked a few times as he watched the two younger residents leave. "Shinobu-chan is an assassin, too?"

"Are you kidding? She has the highest body count of all of us," Kitsune said.

"If she didn't before, she does after last night," Motoko noted while looking away from Keitaro in annoyance.

Naru furrowed her brow, and kept glaring at Kitsune.

* * *

Masachika Sano killed his first person at fourteen in a desperate alleyway fight, beating him to death with a length of pipe. From that moment, he was a self-proclaimed stone-cold killer, relishing every opportunity he had to resort to murder. Throughout his high school career, he led a gang of delinquents that eventually became the Z-Boys, stealing cars, robbing, breaking and entering, and of course killing. Thanks to his short height, unassuming appearance, and a very wealthy father he got away with it all.

By the time high school was over, he and his Z-Boys had fallen victim to the tired cliche of the aura of invincibility. They were smart, they were vicious, and they were well-connected but above all else they were lucky. Within a few years, they had pushed out or absorbed the organized syndicates working in Nagano and began the life of fast cars and hot women, terrorizing anyone who would think to stand in their way by taking out those who did. When Sano had personally plied the Nagano Prefecture Police Chief's compliance with a few million yen and a gorgeous Korean girl for him to come home to every night, that sense of immortality was cemented.

And now, Sano was cowering in terror behind a tree, watching that immortality crumble as a little girl mowed down his people with a machine gun.

Red walked into the clearing past Sano, steadily sweeping the machine gun from side-to-side, raking the fleeing gang members with bullets. Braver Z-Boys attempted to take cover behind their garish rides and return fire, only for them to fatally discover that their tricked out rides did very little to stop 7.62x51mm rounds.

Just over half a mile away, Motoko adjusted her telescope as she trained it to the brilliantly clear sky above. On the edge of the hilltop they were occupying, Kitsune was looking through a different scope, that of her M24. "How's the sky, Momo?"

"The view is much better here, I can see Neptune so clearly," Motoko replied. "How is Red doing?"

"Red's having the time of her life," Kitsune replied before she noticed a few cars start to move as well as people managing to make it through a gap in the flames. "Oh now we won't be having any of that."

Seeing one the cars attempting to leave clearing for the nearby road, Red turned to open fire, before a bullet struck the back of her head. The flattened round slid off the back of her hood, before she rubbed the back of her head. More bullets from the Z-Boy shooting at her similarly bounced off her red attire, before she turned around and tore him apart with a sustained burst of fire.

Letting go of the trigger, she gently touched the barrel and smiled. "Nice and hot."

She turned around and ran towards a Z-Boy trying not to piss himself as he aimed a shotgun at her. Unfortunately when he did shoot, the birdshot went right over Red's head before she stabbed the red hot barrel into his stomach.

Grabbing him by his jacket, Red leaned around him and opened fire through him onto the cars trying to flee in the narrow gap created by her fire and the brave Z-Boys trying to cover their escape. Lifting him off his feet and using him as a proper meatshield, Red walked towards the impromptu defense line, occasionally peering around to make sure she didn't lose her bead.

Away from the clearing as bullets whipped over (and through) cars, bikes and their operators, the punk named Ueno was desperately leading the exodus from the slaughter from the driver's seat of a low-riding pickup truck. Leaning out the window, he called back to the other fleeing cars. "Yo! Get to the road and meet up in Matsum-!"

His head exploded like a melon.

Up on her hilltop, Kitsune had already chambered a new round in her rifle, found a new and fired again, killing the driver of another car and creating a pileup of cars just meters short of the road and to possible escape.

"Ah! Next time a little warning?" Motoko complained as she took observations of the night sky.

"Sorry," Kitsune said as she fired again.

Leaning on the trigger, Red finished slaughtering the last runners she could see, before she heard the worst possible sound in the world: the click of her M240B finally running out of the 1750 rounds carried in the backpack she wore. Removing the backpack and strapping the gun to it, she pulled a cord from the pack and tossed into the the lined up cars trying to escape.

With a bright flash, the pack and gun exploded with tremendous force, and Red smiled in satisfaction as the chain reaction sent flames, shrapnel, and bodies in every direction.

When she turned around there was Sano, having finally rediscovered what little courage he had and aiming his sawed-off at her.

"Nothing to lose now, I see?" Red asked, before Sano shot her in the chest.

* * *

"Shinobu-chan, you're zoning out again. It's time for lunch."

The voice of her friend and classmate Akiko Taichi stirred Shinobu from staring blankly out their classroom window while rubbing her chest. Blinking several times, Shinobu looked to her friend, an unremarkable schoolgirl with brown hair done up in twin-tails. "Oh sorry, I've had a lot on my mind."

Akiko tilted her head slightly. "Did your Mom and Dad try to make you pick sides again?"

Shinobu shook her head. "Actually, we got a new landlord at the house."

It was a well-known fact to Shinobu's classmates that Shinobu lived away from her parents, whom according to her were going through a bitter divorce. As a result, when she first started class she was bullied by some of the meaner kids, but once Su started going to class with her most of them stopped.

"A new landlord, what about that creepy spinster?"

Oh, if Haruka was around to hear that. Shinobu smiled slightly. "Oh, she's still around. Granny made her grandson the new landlord."

Akiko gasped. "Your new landlord is a boy?! Is he cute?!"

Shinobu blushed and shyly tapped her fingers together. "Is he ever..."

"How cute? Does the air sparkle around him when he looks at you?" Akiko asked.

"Well... maybe if he took off his glasses, not that he needs to. He's so handsome..." Now that Shinobu thought about it, she hadn't seen him without them yet.

Akiko immediately soured. "Ew, glasses? Shinobu-chan, you have weird tastes. Why can't you like normal boys?"

"All the boys you're crazy about look like Gackt though."

"Because Gackt is the hottest and everyone should aspire to look like him." Akiko paused at that. "Or Jotaro Kujo."

Shinobu would never understand her friend's taste in men.

"So what did you make for lunch?" Akiko asked.

Suddenly, running out of the house in a blind panic came up and bit Shinobu on her tush hard. "Oh no... I... I forgot it."

"You can have some of mine," another girl offered, prompting Shinobu to cringe and look towards the girl with long bleached hair who called her out.

Fumiko Aso, a delinquent with her fair share of incidents under her belt and a repeat tormentor of Shinobu, grinned at the normally quiet girl as she offered her bento. "Though in exchange you have to do something for me."

Fumiko removed the red ribbon that was present on the sailor-type uniforms of every girl in the class... except for Shinobu. "You have to wear this ribbon for thirty seconds."

Another thing well-known about Shinobu, was her pronounced fear of the color red. At first picked on heavily for it, an impromptu visit from Haruka prompted the majority of incidents to cease, with Su's enrollment of the school ensuring it. In cases like Fumiko's, the teasing never seemed to end.

"No, I'm good," Shinobu squeaked.

"Okay, twenty seconds."

Shinobu quickly shook her head.

"Ten? Ten seconds isn't going to kill you."

_It's all she needs to kill everyone in here,_ Shinobu thought.

Akiko leaped to her defense. "Stop bugging Shinobu-chan about it! If she doesn't want your food, she doesn't have to wear the stupid ribbon!"

Fumiko rolled her eyes and got up. "Oh come on, it's just a few seconds, just put it on!"

When she tried to lunge forward to stick the clip-on ribbon to Shinobu, however, Su grabbed her arm. When Fumiko looked at Su in surprise, the natural blond placed the end of a straw in her mouth. "Su made banana smoothies, Fumifumi should try!"

The faux-blonde delinquent was about to have some words for Su, but forgot on account of the smoothie tasting _delicious._ "Mm!" She lowered it. "Wow Su, this is really good."

With her usual cheerful smile, Su nodded assent. "Bananas are awesome!" She turned to Shinobu, and offered her a smoothie. "Here! This one's blueberry-banana!"

Relieved, Shinobu took the smoothie and enjoyed a sip. "Thank you, Su."

Su gave Shinobu a knowing smile, and sat down with the three girls. "So, Shinobu-chan has a super big crush on our new landlord cuz she saw his 'banana'."

Shinobu immediately performed a spittake as Akiko gasped. "Really?!"

"SU!" the exasperated blue-haired girl shrieked, while Fumiko burst into laughter, smoothie shooting from her nose.

* * *

Sano pumped his shotgun and fired again, hitting Red in the chest once more. His next shot put buckshot into Red's stomach, as did a third. When he tried to chamber another shell, he found that his sawed-off's magazine was empty. He quickly reached to his pocket, to grab an extra shell, but Red suddenly looked up at him, a broad grin all but splitting her face in half.

"No... no fucking way..." He dropped the shell he had pulled out as Red grabbed the front of her apron and shook it, causing all the pellets to fall to her feet. "I shot you... four fucking times!"

Suddenly she rushed forward and slapped the shotgun out of his hand. "And you're a terrible shot. Come on, you can't even shoot me in the face?"

With a yell, Sano swung at Red's face, only to have his arm caught in an iron grip. When he tried to move, she squeezed and he swore he could feel his bones begin to crack. "Ahh...!"

Red brought a finger to her lips. "Shh..."

Sano took a pull away again, but Red held firm as she rested her finger on his lips. "Shh..."

She grabbed him by the shoulders, and with strength unbecoming her size, sat him down on the ground amidst the burning cars and bodies that once was his loyal army. Seated on the ground, and trembling with fear, the gang leader stared at Red as she reached into her apron and pulled out a match.

"Here, hold this and think of someone you love," she said as she offered it to him.

Sano, trembling, took the match from her and held it tightly between his fingers. Grabbing his cheeks, she popped his jaw open, and forced a fragmentation grenade in his mouth. She brought her face close to his, looking directly into his wide eyes as she slapped a thick length of tape over the grenade.

"And maybe, my Little Match Boy, they'll come down and take your soul to heaven," she said before she pulled the pin and armed it.

Turning around she briskly walked away, as she contacted Kitsune. "I'm almost done here, about two more seconds."

The grenade exploded, ineffectually showering Red with shrapnel. "And done."

"I just put the last straggler down," Kitsune said as she ejected the shell from her M24. "I'm sorry Red, but it's time for you to go."

"But I don't wanna..." Red whined. "The night's still young!"

Kitsune pulled a remote from her pocket, and hit a button. "You don't really have a choice."

Red felt several injectors pierce her skin underneath her bright red body armor, before it all began to melt away much like Motoko's following Su's untimely intervention. Sleep claimed Shinobu before she even hit the ground, her red dress replaced with a suit of bodyarmor underneath.

"This is first unit," a man radioed Kitsune, "Is Red down?"

"Down."

"Understood, we're moving in to collect and we'll meet at the rendezvous."

Kitsune picked up her rifle and stood. "Are you done?"

Motoko was already done folding up her telescope. "Well ahead of you. Shall we move on to the other objectives?"

"Naturally!" Kitsune said as she walked towards the quietly starting up helicopter.

* * *

In the hot spring of the Hinata-sou, Naru and Keitaro enjoyed a mid-afternoon soak while the house was empty. Motoko, Shinobu, and Su were still at school, and Kitsune had been called to do a job in the city below.

"So..." Keitaro began as he looked up at the trees, whose leaves had yet to begin their turn thanks to unseasonably warm fall weather.

Naru was rubbing her face with a cool rag. "So what?"

"How long have you been here, doing jobs?"

"Since my first year of high school, why?"

"J-just curious that's all."

"Oh, okay." Naru set down her rag and gave him a sidelong look. "Have you ever done any jobs?"

"No, I don't have any talent for it. The most I was ever good at was Granny's jujutsu, and my little sister would beat me up all the time then." Keitaro sighed. "After a while I gave up on all that and focused on being a normal person... well, relatively speaking."

Naru nodded in understanding. "I started doing jobs the moment I moved in. Kitsune's been doing jobs since before, though." She smiled. "It's funny. We were both friends before we moved in, and it was pretty funny when we found we were part of the same clan the whole time."

Keitaro chuckled. "Fate smiles on you, Naru-chan." He then let out a hum. "How long has Kitsune been doing it? She talks about it like it's nothing, you know?"

"She hasn't even told me, but I know the Konno start really young. She probably had her first kill at like ten or eleven, but she's a consummate professional, you know? It's probably the only thing she takes seriously... other than her alcohol."

"Yeah that's kind of a flag to me..." Keitaro pointed out.

"Believe it or not, she's strictly a social drinker."

Keitaro stared at her. "Really?"

Naru nodded. "Well that or she sobers up fast, I've never seen her crawl into a bottle or anything of the sort."

"I see... Motoko-san is a Man-Slayer from the Aoyama, right? Was she always a man-slayer or did she start because of-?"

"Her sister getting married? Yes." Naru narrowed her eyes a bit. "Why the interest in how long we've been killing?"

"Oh, what Kitsune said about Shinobu's been bugging me all day. Has she really killed more people than all of you?"

Naru grimaced. "More than all of us combined."

Keitaro nodded slowly. "So, why don't you like that she's being sent out?"

"Because it's one thing to send a kid out there that's been trained to do this, it's something else to send a kid out there to do it because she's mentally ill."

He grew wide-eyed. "Mentally ill?!"

"She has a split personality, like a completely separate person going on in her head. When it comes out, it's pretty much a wild animal that likes nothing but killing."

Suddenly Shinobu threatening Motoko with a red handkerchief yesterday made sense. Keitaro shuddered. "Really?"

Naru nodded. "Shinobu and her mother are from a different clan, and they defected to this one because of what happened to Shinobu. They trained her to be the perfect assassin, even better than Kitsune, but she couldn't deal with it... so she snapped and created the monster personality, Red."

Keitaro grimaced. "That's awful."

"Yeah, Haruka was able to fix her a little bit. Red only comes out when Shinobu wears the color red... which is why she isn't allowed to wear it."

"But Haruka still let Kitsune use her for jobs?"

Naru frowned. "Granny allows it, because Red is still good at what she does, and because Shinobu allows it."

That was an even bigger surprise. "Shinobu doesn't mind it?"

Naru shook her head. "She acts like she doesn't, but she's terrified of Red and what she could do out there."

Keitaro mulled on that. Despite being so scared of Red, she lets her be used, but why? After a moment of pondering, he remembered yesterday. "Shinobu does most of the housework, doesn't she?"

At that, Naru flushed in embarrassment. "Well... not exactly most of the housework..."

Keitaro stared at her.

Her flush spread across her face. "Well... she does a little more than her fair share..."

His stare intensified.

The flush darkened. "... Okay, she does a lot of the housework..."

He was standing over her, staring pointedly down at her.

"FINE!" She shoved him back. "She does all of the housework, the cooking, the cleaning, and the laundry!"

When she looked to Keitaro, he was embedded deeply into one of the spring's boulders. "Oh shit!"

Pulled out of the rock and of course perfectly unharmed, Keitaro relaxed in the spring with Naru on his lap, her head bowed in shame. "Well, everyone else goes out and puts themselves on the line for jobs right? Maybe she feels bad that everyone is doing such risky things and she doesn't want anyone to think she's just here to clean the animal cages."

Naru's gaze tilted upward at that, and she let out a hum. "I don't want her to think that. She's a part of our family, you know? Not just our maid or our tagalong girl..."

Keitaro snapped his fingers as an idea came to him. "Let's show her, then. I have an idea!"

Naru smiled. "You do now?"

And so...

"Fumifumi isn't too bad a person. Her hair is silly though, and it smells like peroxide, pee-yew!" Su was her usual animated self as she and Shinobu walked up the stairs to the house that evening. Thanks to the Banana Smoothie of Peace and Shinobu's infinite embarrassment, the delinquent girl had wound up softening up considerably to both, and by the end of the day Shinobu had wound up with another friend.

"It used to be pink, but then she wanted to be like one of the bad girls so she bleached it," Shinobu noted.

Su grew wide-eyed. "Pink?! Like cotton candy?! Why would anyone get rid of that?!"

"Probably because hungry foreign girls would try to eat it."

The fact that Shinobu had actually made a joke nearly caused Su to trip. Catching herself, she stared at Shinobu agape, before smiling broadly. "You made a funny!"

"I'm not that bad!" Shinobu yelped in mild indignation.

When they entered the house, Shinobu stopped and stared when she found that the living room was positively spotless. "Huh?"

That wasn't the first thing Su noticed. "Oh! Su smells dinner!"

"Dinner, but...?" Shinobu stopped when Keitaro peered out of the dining room.

"Oh, hey Shinobu-chan, I hope you don't mind," he started, "But Naru-chan and I decided to cook dinner for you."

"For me?" Shinobu asked.

"Yeah, we made your favorites too," Naru called from the kitchen, "And Keitaro made a cake."

"Ooh, cake!" Su gasped as she bolted for the kitchen. "Is there still a bowl? Su wants to lick the bowl!"

"It's already been washed," Naru replied.

"Aw!"

Shinobu began to fret. "Y-you didn't have to do this for me, really! I don't even know why you would..."

She trailed off when Keitaro walked up to her and rested a hand atop her head. "Naru-chan tells me how hard you work for everyone here, so I figured that tonight and for this weekend we'd all spoil you. You're going to get to rest and relax, and we're all going to look after you this time, to show our appreciation for everything you do."

"You... you don't have to..." Shinobu tried to argue again.

Smiling warmly to Shinobu, Keitaro ruffled up her hair. "I'm the landlord of the house now, what kind of landlord would I be if I didn't take care of the people living under my roof like a family, Shinobu-chan?"

Her eyes growing as wide as dinner plates, Shinobu stared up at Keitaro as the sparkles Akiko had talked about appeared around him. "Keitaro-s-senpai..." She smiled brilliantly. "Thank you!"

"You're welcome. Now come sit down, before Su-chan eats everything we set out." Keitaro turned back towards the kitchen, leaving Shinobu swooning in the living room as Motoko and Kitsune walked in.

"I seriously don't think Su would let you use her Plasma Weapons..." Kitsune trailed off when she saw Shinobu twirling around in the living room, still in mid-swoon. "Okay?"

"Well I figure if a metal sword won't cut him..." Motoko also stopped when she saw Shinobu. "Shinobu-chan?"

"Senpai, you're so wonderful..." Shinobu brought her hands over her cheeks. "I'll do my best to make you happy... even... those things..."

Kitsune's snerk snapped Shinobu out of her tweenage fantasy, and she looked back to see the two older tenants staring at her. "Ah..."

"You know, if you want to do 'those things', I have some books that might help," Kitsune teased.

Motoko gave Kitsune a look. "No."

Shinobu, who was on her way to going as pale as a sheet, immediately reversed course and doubled-down. "Can I borrow them tonight?"

"NO!" Motoko yelled.

Laughing, Kitsune put her arm around Shinobu and walked with her towards the dining room. "Ignore her, she's just mad because I won't let her borrow them."

Motoko flushed brightly. "Die a thousand deaths, Konno!"

* * *

His ringing phone awoke Prefecture Police Chief Akihito Godai from his peaceful slumber. The forty-seven year old Police Chief had been living a little bit outside of his means lately: A new house in an affluent neighborhood, a new expensive car with expensive customizations, a new memory foam bed for his bad back, and a new and very young Korean girlfriend who cooked and cleaned and didn't leave the house without him.

All these things and more were gifts from the late Masachika Sano, whose killers were calling him right now.

"This is Godai, what is it?" The mustachioed, gray-haired police officer asked.

"Masachika Sano and the Z-Boys are dead, and in five minutes so are you," Kitsune answered.

Bad back be damned, Godai sat upright in a flash. "Who is this?!"

"Death."

Godai ended the call and climbed out of bed. Next to where he'd been sleeping, his girlfriend stirred and sat up to look at him quizzically as he went into his closet and pulled out his side-arm, a .38 revolver. He was dialing, naturally, the police.

"Hello?" Kitsune answered again.

Yanking the phone from his ear, Godai stared in disbelief at it. He had called the emergency line!

"I'm sorry, all outgoing calls have been rerouted to me. No one can save you, Godai-san."

"Who are you? What is the meaning of this?!" He demanded as the beads of sweat became buckets of sweat.

"The meaning? Taking bribes and a cute Korean Girlfriend instead of doing your job means that you betrayed the people you took this job to serve. Not just the people of this prefecture, but those above you who expect admirable men to perform admirable work."

Godai went pale. "Y-you can't prove anything! There's no evidence-!"

"Evidence only matters in the courts and your trial was already held."

"What's going on?" The girl quietly asked.

"Shut up and get dressed, we're getting out of here!" he snapped at the girl as he hurried out of his bedroom and went downstairs. "You're bluffing! I'm a police chief, whatever you think you're going to get from me, all you're going to get instead is the full weight of the law!"

He opened the door, and saw a helicopter parked on the road in front of his house. The helicopter's chin-mounted spotlight turned on and illuminated him.

Kitsune, standing besides the helicopter, closed her phone up and smiled as Motoko stepped in front of the spotlight, casting her shadow overtop Godai. "You didn't think we'd let you get away, did you? You have one honorable way out of this and if I were you, I'd take it."

With that, Kitsune tossed a sheathed tanto to Godai's feet. "It won't change anything, but you'll have died on your terms."

Looking down at the tanto and then at the two women, he raised the revolver to shoot Motoko.

Standing behind him on his doorstep, Motoko calmly sheathed her sword. She looked back at him and spat, "Fool."

Godai blinked and looked down as he suddenly felt numb from the chest down. He looked back at Motoko, who turned around to face him. Raising her leg, Motoko placed her foot squarely between Godai's shoulders, and pushed the top half of his body, bisected at the heart, off the bottom half and to the ground.

"Mission completed," Motoko declared as she stepped over the dead police chief. Glancing back at the doorway, she saw a horrified teenaged girl staring at her. Motoko glared down at Godai's body, before walking to the helicopter.

Kitsune nodded as the helicopter's rotors began to spin up, creating a soft howl. "Well, let's get home, it's getting dangerously close to sunrise."

A police officer stepped from the shadows, the new chief of Nagano Prefecture's police. Kitsune looked to him. "I take it you'll manage from here?"

"Yes, ma'am," the officer replied as Motoko boarded the craft. "You were never here."

"Good man," she said to the cop before climbing into the unnaturally silent helicopter, which lifted off and into the night.

Plopping down onto her seat next to Shinobu, Kitsune smiled to Motoko. "See? You can still cut things other than Keitaro."

Motoko just let out a snort. "I'll figure out something that can cut him too, just wait."

"Please don't..."

Both Motoko and Kitsune looked to Shinobu, who was staring at the former in a half-asleep state. "Don't hurt Keitaro-san... I like him..."

Snorting, Motoko gripped her sword. "That's not a good enough reason to stay my blade."

"... Then I'll just blow off your hands," Red then said as she closed her eyes, causing both older girls to jump.

"Red...?" Kitsune whispered.

"Keitaro... he seems nice... and he can't die... that's pretty interesting..." Red murmured before she drifted back off into her drug-induced unconsciousness.

Silent and wide-eyed, both Kitsune and Motoko stared at Shinobu, before they looked to each other. For a few moments, the silence reigned, until...

"Damn Momo, you may as well just quit."

Motoko glared at Kitsune. "Shut up."

* * *

Dinner eaten, dessert enjoyed, and a nice long soak in the hot springs behind her, Shinobu finished putting on her pajamas and sat down on her bed. "Today was so wonderful..."

She lifted her shirt and smiled when she saw her bruises had gone too. Climbing onto her bed, Shinobu crawled over to her nightstand, and lifted up a small mirror that had been lying face down on its surface. The small circular mirror was unremarkable, save for the red tape around its edges. Holding up the mirror, she smiled at her reflection.

"Keitaro is really nice," she said.

Her expression became cooler, a smirk creasing her lips as Red replied in her reflection. "You want to do disgusting things to him, don't you?"

Shinobu blushed brightly. "N-n..."

She stopped and Red smirked. "You can't lie to me, so don't try."

Her blush deepening, Shinobu conceded. "S-so what?"

"I'm interested in him too," Red admitted.

Shinobu gasped. "Eh?!"

"I've never heard of someone who can't die. I want to know more about him..." Red grinned. "I want to do disgusting things to him too, but probably not the same things you do, you disgusting pervert."

Shinobu gasped. "I don't want you to hurt him!"

"Motoko can't, what makes you think I can? The overwhelming superiority of the gun to the sword notwithstanding..."

Red's smirk vanished, and Shinobu's uncertainty returned. "R-really?"

She smirked again. "Really. You and I are one and the same after all. We just have... different interests. So now the question stands..."

It grew into that murderous smile. "... How do we get him for ourself?"

Shinobu put the mirror face down on the nightstand. A long shiver ran through her, as Red's question echoed in her thoughts.

Letting out a sigh, she climbed under her bed sheets and stared up at the ceiling.

"I would like senpai... for ourself..." she whispered to herself, before she closed her eyes and let a grin spread across her lips.

* * *

A/N: Grab a glass because there's going to be a flood!


	5. Hitokiri

Disclaimer: Sometimes we all gotta be a little Darker Than Black

* * *

On the surface the city of Hinata in the Kanagawa Prefecture was a peaceful, picturesque city that went at its own pace as opposed to the bustling metropolis up the coast that was Tokyo. More a little known resort town than an actual city, Hinata had won a reputation for its scenic view of Sagami Bay, relaxing hot springs, and historic infrastructure including antique street cars and buildings left untouched by the war over 60 years ago.

The reality though, was that Hinata was one of, if not the most corrupt city in Japan.

The Yakuza, Chinese Triads, Bratva… over the years all manner of organized crime had been drawn to Hinata to take advantage of profits that hovered just out of their reach. And like any other city with an organized crime problem, brutal wars between rival groups led to bloodshed. What made Hinata different from the rest of the country was the sheer scope of the bloodshed… and how no one knew about it.

Three years ago, two rival Yakuza groups slaughtered each other to the last man.

Six months after that, internal strife within a third Yakuza group regarding control of the entire city led to a civil war that saw almost all members killed in the fighting.

A year later, a Russian syndicate tried to open its doors with the help of a friendly Yakuza group. Relations turned sour and the both sides exterminated one another with few survivors.

Most recently, a repeat of a previous incident: A Yakuza operation that had been in town for little over three months within the city wound up self-destructing in a bloody contest for power.

The numbers didn't add up. Over the last three years, dozens of men were turning up dead in this peaceful city and there was no mention of it. Not in the press, not on the net, not even on the street. The only word that anyone had to go by were those of the scant survivors who themselves became very hard to locate after they attempted to tell what happened.

No one would've never even known about this, were it not for two breakthroughs: the first being a Triad member in Shanghai, who had heard of an entity within Hinata City that had been quietly wiping out any efforts for organized crime to take hold within its limits from his brother–who had died during a disastrous venture by the Triads into the city. The second was a clue from the most recent crime scene, a message written in blood by one of the victims:

"The Fox-eyed Girl did this"

A Fox-eyed Girl–or one with eyes that seemed perpetually narrowed or closed. Going back over the testimonies of disappeared men, a pattern emerged. A shifty-eyed girl, a young one, always came up at some point in their stories, usually around the point where things went badly for everyone involved. She was the herald of their end.

The criminal organizations that had lost so much to this deceptive city suddenly had a face to attribute to it, something to sink their teeth into and rend apart. The Fox-eyed girl had to die, and it was for that reason _he_ was here, walking down the main thoroughfare of the city underneath a raining November sky.

"_To think that we would be able to get a hold of you, this will be better than luring those bastard Russians or Chinese into a sleepy little town like that. We want something to be left when it's done." _

The assassin's steely eyes narrowed as he recalled the conversation with his employer, a man who insisted the meeting be conducted in shadows.

"_Are you sure it's just the girl?"_

"_We've dug around, asked some questions, and prodded the right people. It's just the girl. When they need her, she comes alone and goes alone. She never trusts her employers, even if she's worked for them before, and if circumstances require assistance, she refuses the job outright until they change. She's a lone wolf… or fox in this case."_

"…"

The assassin didn't buy it. An assassin, even of her purported caliber, could not manage such feats for so long on her own and undetected. An impenetrable veil of secrecy and death hung over the city, and as he entered it he knew he had to be on his guard lest he become just another victim of it.

Ahead of him was his destination, a street-corner coffee shop where he had agreed ahead of schedule to meet with the assassin herself. Once he had her in her sights, and got and understanding of what he was up against, he would probably have only one chance to act.

Between him and his destination, a high school-aged girl wearing headphones and shielding herself from the rain with an umbrella approached. Minding her, he moved aside to let her pass.

_**SPAK!**_

The assassin fell to the ground, his head missing as the rain quickly washed down the cloud of red mist and short-cut hair that was all that remained of it.

Wiggling her fingers to soothe away the sting across her knuckles as music blared through the headphones she wore, Naru continued to walk to cram school–heedless of the commotion that went on behind her when other pedestrians finally took note of the headless man lying in the middle of the sidewalk.

**Love Hina: The Merry Killers  
Chapter 5: Hitokiri**

"Well… that was discouraging," lamented a short and heavyset young man with light brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. "Why are these prep tests even harder than the entrance exam itself?"

**Shirai Kimiaki  
Age: 19  
Exam Passing Odds: 30 Percent  
**

A taller, skinnier man walking alongside him out of the Sasagi Seminar College Prep Center shrugged his shoulder. "If you can pass the Prep Tests you can pass anything. That said, we're fucked."

**Haitani Masayuki  
Age: 20  
Exam Passing Odds: 17 Percent  
**

"Maybe you, but I at least broke thirty," Shirai pointed out defensively. "I have _some_ hope."

"Between the three of us combined, we still fail like the worst Getter Team ever." Haitani looked at the aforementioned third man of their trio. "And with your abysmal grades, you are without a doubt our Musashi."

"That's not even fair, my exams are twice as hard as yours," the star failure of the trio replied.

**Keitaro Urashima  
Age: 20  
Exam Passing Odds: 2 Percent  
**

Haitani shrugged his shoulders. "Then you should be working twice as hard, don't you think?" He sighed. "Ah, forget it. No point in dwelling on our failure. Gentlemen, we should focus on what's in front of us!"

"A lifetime of menial jobs, living paycheck-to-paycheck?" Shirai asked.

"The derision of our peers for our failures as members of civilized society?" Keitaro suggested.

The tallest and most handsome of the trio smirked. "Not that. That!"

He pointed to three girls walking down the street away from them, umbrellas held over their heads.

Shirai peered around Haitani and brought a hand to his brow to shield his bespectacled eyes from the rain. "Wow, look at them! His eyes immediately went to the dark-skinned girl, the leftmost one of the trio. "I like the girl with the dark skin, wearing the thigh-highs."

Haitani scoffed. "Dude, she's gotta be like still in middle school. See her uniform?"

"Huh? With legs like those? There's no way she's that young," Shirai retorted.

Keitaro paused. Wait, dark-skinned girl in a middle school uniform?

"Me, I would go for the black-haired girl, but I can't stand tall chicks, you know? I like 'em small and cute, like the orange miniskirt girl on the right," Haitani said.

Keitaro's eyes grew wide. Wait. Tall black-haired girl… and that orange miniskirt…! "Uh, guys I don't think you should-!"

Too late, Haitani was going after them. "Ah well, if we pick all three up their strengths will cover their weaknesses, just like Getter!" he assured his cronies before calling to the girls. "Hey girls, would you like to go out with us?"

"With you?" The tall black-haired girl closed her umbrella. "I would much rather scoop out my own uterus with a spoon and eat it."

A blast of wind struck Shirai and Haitani, knocking them both back into Keitaro. All three failures hit the ground in a groaning, defeated heap. Looking back at them, Motoko, Naru, and Su gave a start when they saw Keitaro lying at the bottom of the pile.

"Oh, heya manager!" Su chirped.

"Keitaro…?" Naru began before Motoko verbally lunged.

"Well, well, well… what is this? Struggling to get into Toudai for your promised girl and yet you're chasing skirts without a care, Urashima?"

Keitaro looked up at Motoko. "What? No!"

"Then what is this?!" Motoko pointed at the unconscious Haitani and Shirai. "Running around after seminar with your wingmen, going after underage girls?"

"No, they're just my idiot friends and they were just trying to flirt before you attacked them with an umbrella, you psycho!"

"That was a warning, they wouldn't have survived an attack." She pointed the umbrella at Keitaro's face. "Gather up your disgusting friends and go trolling for some women your age, you disgusting pervert."

Naru put her arm over Motoko's shoulder and leaned close to her, an ominous light gleaming off her glasses. "I'll tolerate you trying to kill him because you can't. But Motoko, you really ought to at least watch how you talk to my boyfriend whenI'm standing right here."

She squeezed her shoulder as the gleam off her sunglasses disappeared to reveal to Keitaro the very annoyed glare she was giving Motoko. Tensing when her shoulder was squeezed, Motoko relented and stormed off without opening her umbrella back up.

"Ooh… Momo's in trouble~!" Su chimed as she followed after her.

Keitaro sighed and stood up. "Sheesh, what a hot-tempered girl."

"Well, I guess with you around she's been more high-strung than usual. It's no excuse for being a brat in public like this, though." Naru walked over to him and smiled. "I'd ask if you were okay, but you know…"

Keitaro looked back at Haitani and Shirai, who were regaining their wits. "Eh, I'm more worried about my friends."

"Bratty as she is, she did only hit them with an attack off her umbrella, so they'll live." She smiled. "So, are you going to be on your way home, or will you be off chasing skirts with them?"

"I should make sure they're all right, but yeah I'll be coming straight home. I really need to work on my studies."

Naru hugged his arm. "That's good drive, Kei-chan." She kissed him on the cheek. "See you when you get home." With that, Naru trotted off to catch up with Motoko and Su, leaving her blushing beau behind.

Reaching up, Keitaro placed his hand over where Naru kissed him and let out a sigh. "Man… having such a cute girlfriend is awesome…"

He then felt something, an great, powerful, and jealous presence that overpowered his senses. His eyes growing wide, he slowly turned around to see Haitani and Shirai all but looming over him, their expressions a mixture of horror, despair, betrayal, and rage.

"SINCE WHEN DID A LOSER LIKE YOU GET A CUTE GIRLFRIEND LIKE HER?!"

Keitaro let out a sigh, he knew he forgot to mention something…

* * *

Later that afternoon, Keitaro and Naru were sitting in the living room reading study guides and making small talk. Motoko was up on the roof training, while Su was sitting at the dining room table, impatiently waiting for Shinobu to finish dinner in the kitchen. Kitsune was not home, but would probably be home soon enough, she was rarely out after dark.

"You know, that was the first time I ever saw you lose your composure."

Keitaro looked from his book to Naru. "Huh?"

"You snapped at Motoko, even called her a psycho."

"Oh, that… I actually feel bad about that."

Naru frowned. "There is such a thing as being too forgiving, you know."

"I know, but she didn't actually hurt either of my friends, so I'm not upset about it."

Naru made an amused huff. "If only I was immortal, then I could let everything slide too."

"It's not even that. I juat understand where Motoko is coming from, regarding her sister. She loves her big sister, and she believes she _must_ to do this."

Naru put down her book and regarded her pointedly. "You're fine with the possibility of her killing you and then butchering your cousin and most of your family?"

Keittaro shook his head. "I understand her, and even if she could kill me I wouldn't stop her. But you know as much as I do what the point of all this is, and what would happen if she somehow did."

Her eyebrows rising at that, Naru slowly nodded. "You know, it's a shame that insight of yours doesn't transfer to your studies… or your choice of friends."

Keitaro recoiled at that. "What's wrong with my friends?"

"Well, they were a couple of twenty year olds scheming on some sweet, sweet jailbait."

"I have no argument for that, other than that they're actually just harmless man-children who like to flirt."

"Like you?" Naru kissed him affectionately on the cheek.

"Hey!"

Naru laughed before the front doors opened.

"I'm home~!" Kitsune sang as she walked into the Hinata-sou that evening, carrying a number of packages and bags. "And I come bearing gifts!"

"Hey Kitsune!" Keitaro and Naru called as Kitsune walked to the coffee table and began setting down her swag upon it.

Perking up from her mock-moping, Su dashed into the living room as Kitsune set down the gifts on the coffee table. "Oh! Is it bananas?!"

"No, but I was kind enough to buy you a bunch anyway," Kitsune replied as she handed Su a bag of bananas.

Keitaro picked up one of the boxes as Kitsune set them down. "A jewelry box sample from Mexico? Oh, I always wanted one…"

Naru picked up another of the boxes. "Door chimes?" She opened the box and found the barrel of an M16 instead of the labeled contents. "Huh."

Keitaro opened the jewelry box, and there was another M16 part. "These are full of gun parts."

"Oh, those for Shinobu-chan. The mark from this morning had them delivered to his hotel room," Kitsune said. "By the way, perfect execution as usual. No one has any idea what happened."

Keitaro looked at Naru. "You did a job?"

Naru waved it off. "Yeah, Kitsune's wet work attracts the wrong people sometimes, so I gotta make them disappear."

"Make their heads disappear, at least." Kitsune handed Naru a box. "Here's my token of appreciation."

"Ooh…" Naru popped open the box. "Oh! New clothes!"

She lifted a pair of lace panties that Keitaro got all but the briefest glimpse of before she jammed them back into the box with the brightest flush on her face. "Kitsune!"

"Hey now, those were expensive you know. I spent over half my paycheck on the whole ensemble."

"Thank you Kitsune, that was a nice and thoughtful gift," Keitaro politely said.

Kitsune clapped her hands together. "You're very welcome, Keitaro!"

Naru jabbed him in the side, causing him to yelp, before she was presented another gift, a movie case. "Huh?"

"Come on, you know I'd never leave you hanging with a gag gift," Kitsune said warmly.

Opening it, Naru went sparkly-eyed as she read the title aloud: "Liddo-kun and Friends vs. Kamen Raider: Stop Kicking Me in the Face!"

"That was the other half of my payche-OOF!" Kitsune was knocked over by Naru as she pounced on her with a hug.

As Naru cuddled Kitsune in gratitude, Keitaro looked among the other packages. Among them was a long wrapped package, most certainly a sword. "Hey, Kitsune is this for Motoko?"

Kitsune looked up as she rubbed the top of Naru's head. "Yeah, I picked up Motoko's sword from the smith in town, it's good as new so she can stop using that replacement."

Had the sword not been broken over his head ineffectually a week prior, what Keitaro said next would be foolhardy. "I'll go bring it to her."

"Yeah, she can't afford to have it fixed again right now so try not to rile her up, okay?" Kitsune teased.

Keitaro rolled his eyes and let out a sigh. "I'll try."

As he headed up to the back balcony where she had gone to train, Keitaro shivered at the cold that stung him. It had gotten colder since he arrived, and it was still damp out from the earlier rain. It was really beginning to feel like fall, now. "Who would train in this cold? Sheesh…"

Upon reaching the top of the stairs, he stopped and stared at what he saw. Motoko was standing stone still on the platform, except for her arm, which was a blur as it silently guided the sword she held through the leaves floating on the cool breeze around her, neatly slicing them in half. Despite the apparent speed of her movements, Keitaro couldn't hear the telltale swipes of her blade displacing the air.

"Amazing," he whispered.

Motoko became alert and threw a short blade right into Keitaro's forehead. The weapon bounced off without so much as a bruise. "Urashima?!"

"Hello Momo-chan," Keitaro said as he bent down to pick up the thrown blade.

The kendoist bristled. "Motoko is enough." She saw that he was holding a wrapped sword. "Is that my sword?"

"Yes, Kitsune brought it back from the smith, and I came to bring it to you." Walking over, Keitaro offered both blades to her.

Sheathing her loaner sword, Motoko looked at the sword and then at Keitaro. "You're a duck that brings its own green onions, did you know that?"

Keitaro shrugged his shoulders. "An unkillable duck that brings its own green onions, maybe."

Motoko scowled and turned away from him, walking under the canopy of one of the trees that graciously provided her earlier targets. "What are you, Urashima?"

"I used to wonder that a lot, but since there's no real explanation, I stopped worrying about it a long time ago."

"And everyone knows about this?"

"Most everyone in my family, I guess. They don't know why I'm like this anymore than I do, and they've tried everything they could to kill me themselves."

Motoko's scowl turned into a grimace. "They've tried _everything?"_

Keitaro nodded. "Once my Dad pushed me into an industrial fish grinder. It broke. Then there was the time Granny put me on an island with a deranged mercenary, gave him five hundred million dollars worth of weapons and ammunition, and told him to 'be creative' about killing me."

"You're sure proud of that fact," she growled.

"I was happier that I survived because it hurt _a lot._ Being buried to your waist in sand head-first after being force-fed seventeen pounds of high explosive compounds, and then having a battery of M61s firing at you continuously until their barrels melted wasn't exactly painless."

Motoko stared at him in disbelief. "You're lying."

"Granny has the logs, photos, videos, and receipts to prove it," Keitaro replied.

He noticed Motoko's hands were shaking as they gripped the wrapped sword and the short blade. The short blade clattered to the wooden floor of the balcony, resting edge up. "Motoko…?"

She threw both to the ground and let out a frustrated yell. "I REFUSE!"

"You… refuse?"

"I won't accept it, that you are completely invincible." She turned around to face him, looking on the verge of crying. "There has to be something, _anything_ that can wound you and when I find it I will use it to destroy you!"

Keitaro nodded. "Okay."

Motoko balked. "What?"

"If you can find something that can kill me, I won't stop you."

And that was the other thing about Keitaro that frustrated Motoko to no end. Why… why was this man so… so…?!

Before she could yell out her frustrations properly, Su of all people suddenly appeared from the leaves above her head, hanging upside down. "It's time for dinner, Momo!"

Completely startled in her emotional state, Motoko jumped back and tripped right over her wrapped up sword. Flailing, the kendoist took a spill towards the floor, but stopped halfway when Keitaro caught her with a surprising burst of speed.

"Oooh, nice catch, Keikei!" Su chirped.

Motoko could hardly bear the indignity of it all, caught in midair by this idiot after allowing Su to surprise her and tripping over her own sword like a fool. As her weight fell against his hand for him to support her, however, she gave a start at how easily he handled her and brought her back to her feet.

_He's… strong?_

Keitaro glanced back behind Motoko and let out a sigh of relief before turning his attention to her. "Are you okay?"

She stared at him, still startled, before her normally pale skin colored and she swiftly punched him in the face. "D-don't touch me! Leave me alone!"

Gathering up her weapons, she stormed off in a hurry, leaving a somewhat exasperated Keitaro and an amused Su behind.

"Huh… she's cute when she's flustered," Keitaro observed before Su handed him a little red flag with a cartoon caricature of Motoko's face on it. "What's this?"

"The start of the Momo route!" Su replied with her big smile.

Keitaro stared at Su… and just shook his head in his own exasperation.

* * *

As the new landlord, Keitaro had taken his job seriously, and his first duty as manager had been to assign duties to the tenants of the house, encouraging compliance to the clever tune of lowering the rent. On the plus side, it got everyone pitching in and easing the workload for Shinobu–the original intention of the plan–but on the negative… it made Kitsune extra eager to contribute. The last five nights in a row, Kitsune had "selflessly" taken on kitchen duty for the house, and as a result Keitaro came to appreciate why Shinobu did most of the cooking and was eager to try hers tonight.

"Wow, it looks amazing, Shinobu!" he declared as he looked at the Five-Star spread put out for dinner.

Not only did it smell good to the point that Keitaro was drooling buckets, it was also beautifully presented too. But most importantly, there was no sign of any beef, or a barbecue or marinade sauce of some kind. If he had to eat one more grilled steak, he was worried he'd swear off all meat forever.

Kitsune pouted as Shinobu tried and fail to stammer out thanks to Keitaro. "You never said that about my cooking."

Naru offered a possible reason why. "Your cooking involves killing a cow, field-dressing it, soaking it in barbecue sauce for three days, and then throwing it over a tire fire for five minutes."

"Oh come on," Kitsune snapped back. It was only twelve hours and cooking over a tire fire? Ridiculous!

"It was so rare it was going to jump over the Moon."

"I thought it was good Kitsune, really." It was just too much, every day. Steak, steak, steak.

In another time and place, Chie Satonaka sat straight up awake in bed, wondering who the fox-eyed girl in her dreams was, and how she could make her hers.

Sitting on the other side of Keitaro, her face still an impressive shade of red, Motoko's mind was going a mile a second as she kept her face in a bowl of rice, rapidly scarfing it down to keep from looking at Keitaro. Like many things in her life recently, she was having difficulty getting over what had happened and was over-analyzing it.

_My feet had just left the floor, but I hadn't even hit the floor and yet he was right there, holding me up with one hand like I was a feather._

She glanced at him, he was talking to Naru about his latest failure at his cram school, and looked back down at her rice. Naru was playfully scolding him for screwing up, but was optimistic.

_She's only known him a week and she's always so warm and giddy now._

Until he showed up and woke up that sappy romantic that lurked underneath, Naru was the sort Motoko admired: cool, even-tempered, and hugely focused on the rigors of school and excelling in her academic pursuits without care or need for the romantic. Seeing her like this reminded Motoko too much of how her sister changed after _that man_ began pursuing her.

_Tsuruko…_

She shoveled more rice into her mouth. It was happening again, and this time it was the very obstacle to ending that damned marriage that was taking away another woman she admired.

_As I am now, I can't even hurt him. And he keeps making it hard to!_

A bastard, a lecher, an arrogant ass with a chip on his shoulder and ego to boot thanks to that immortality… if only he was any of those things, but he wasn't! Konno, Su, and especially Shinobu… they had all accepted him without issue or complaint because he was nothing but kind, even to her when she tried to kill him!

She glared at him, her face growing a deeper red. _Why did you have to be so kind you… you…?!_

As if feeling the heat of her gaze, Keitaro turned and looked to her, before he noticed something on her face. "Ah, Momo-chan…"

"What?" She looked away from him.

"You have some rice on your cheek," Keitaro pointed at the rice grains on the corner of her mouth, few survivors of hundreds consumed by the crotchety kendoist.

Before she could reach up to remove it, Kitsune's eyes opened as if she was zeroing in to take the perfect shot. In fact she was, and she did.

"Hey Keitaro, with how she's been blushing at you since she got to the table, why don't you kiss it away?"

Boom! Heart shot.

Motoko's eyes flew wide, as Keitaro blushed himself at the suggestion. Naru let out a laugh at the look on her face when Kitsune's tease struck home, with Su joining in.

"Wow, Momo's face is so red!" the Molmolese girl cheered.

"Wha-no-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-why would I want that lecher's lips anywhere near my body?!" She yelped as she shot up out of her seat and pointed at him for emphasis.

Her reaction just made it worse, as Kitsune took a second shot. "Oh my God, you're already tsundere for him."

Motoko's face was now burning up, as Naru just broke into even harder laughter. She looked around the table. Kitsune had a shit-eating grin on her face, Su was watching raptly as if waiting for the punchline to finally hit at the end of this joke of a display, Shinobu was stuck between overreacting to the idea of Motoko actually being attracted to Keitaro and trying to get everyone to calm down, and Keitaro was looking as awkward and indecisive as some loser boy in one of those harem anime Su liked to watch.

Naru then went and ganked her, twisting the knife right in Motoko's side. "If you do like him, I don't really mind if it means you'll be nicer to him. Don't expect me to share, though~."

Shinobu's glare at Naru went completely missed, as Motoko's reaction was just so much funnier.

"I would never like that… that… freak abomination that doesn't even know how to die!" she screamed before she turned to run out of the room… and went face-first into the wall right next to the archway out of the dining room.

Kitsune fell out of her chair and to the floor, laughing harder than Naru who had covered her mouth and was sputtering loudly.

Keitaro, however, was on his feet and by Motoko's side in an instant. He placed a hand on her shoulder. "Motoko are you okay?"

Spinning around, Motoko shoved him back. "DON'T TOUCH ME YOU-!"

It happened so suddenly. Turning around to face him, her face so warm she felt dizzy, Motoko was beset by an intense wave of nausea that came hurtling up from her stomach. It exited her mouth, along with the rice she had carelessly stuffed herself with and everything else she ate in the last two hours, and splattered all over Keitaro's front from face to waist.

The dining room was deathly quiet after that, though Kitsune was bubbling towards laughing herself to death.

Motoko was frozen in complete horror as she stared at Keitaro, who was growing wide-eyed in realization that she had literally gotten sick all over him. The heat, dizziness, and embarrassment claimed her then–everything went black as she fainted.

* * *

The Urashima and the Aoyama, for over five centuries the two clans endured a relationship that was complicated and at times strained to the point of hatred. Generations of both clans had seen each other as worthy allies, bitter enemies, reluctant sacrifices, and convenient scapegoats. Despite their over five hundred year shared history, however, never had the two clans had been joined through marriage until this day.

It was only fitting that the two being married would be two of the strongest members of their respective families. Tsuruko Aoyama, the most powerful Demon Slayer to come out of the family in over 150 years, and easily the most skilled swordswoman in the clan, and Naoto Urashima, the unrivaled master of the Urashima-clan's Jujutsu. It was a union over five hundred years in the making, and now that the vows were exchanged and bonds forged, it was a time of great joy and-

"THIS MARRIAGE IS A FARCE!"

Oh dear.

Storming into the wedding reception dressed more for battle than a party, a brazen and furious Motoko forced her way through the guests and onto the dance floor, right in front of the table where the newlyweds were sitting at the center of, flanked by their parents and their parents' parents. Curiously Naoto and Tsuruko were both seated on giant turtles, from which the two looked down at Motoko.

Motoko pointed at Naoto. "This man is a bastard who forced himself repeatedly onto my sister until she broke to his whim! I will not accept this injustice, nor will I allow it to continue any further!"

The effeminate young man seated upon the turtle, who was all but a dead-ringer for Haruka, gave a surprised start at Motoko's declaration. Next to him, upon her turtle, the wedding kimono-clad Tsuruko gave a start in shock, and then gazed gloomily upon her younger sister

She drew her sword, and held it aloft. "I will cut you down, Naoto Urashima!"

She took one step forward, and suddenly she was in a barren, open plain that was devoid of even a single blade of grass for miles in every direction. It was not featureless, however. Before Motoko were a series of tall stone pillars, the hot sun shining brightly behind them and obscuring her view of their peaks.

Even as she tried to shield her eyes, she heard a voice from them.

"Her actions have been nothing but reprehensible. Childish attachment or not, she marched in and drew her sword with every intent to kill our child."

"And she remained unrepentant even after she was disarmed and bound. She _spat _at Naoto-kun."

Motoko recognized those elderly voices. Naoto's parents, two very esteemed members of the Urashima clan.

"Forgive us, we were not attempting to diminish Motoko's outburst in the least. Her reasons for acting in such a manner do not justify them in the least, and for that we are deeply sorry."

That was her mother. Motoko glowered. "Do not apologize to those dogs!"

"An apology from you is hollow unless you can do something about her behavior. If she's going to continue to act aggressively towards Naoto, towards any of our clan, action must be taken to prevent it." Naoto's father.

Motoko then heard her father's voice "We've already considered our options, and frankly there is only one. Motoko is second only to Tsuruko herself despite her age. She is… dangerous."

"There's another option." Motoko blinked when she heard Haruka's voice.

"Haruka-chan?" That was Granny Hina's voice.

"If she wants to kill Naoto, then we should let her."

The reaction from the elders of both sides of the family was swift and vehement. "What?!"

"But," Haruka added, "In order to do so… she must kill Keitaro."

"Kill… Keitaro…?" Motoko's parents seemed lost on who this Keitaro fellow was.

Naoto's parents, however, sounded far less stern at the offer. "Keitaro, hm? Haha, if Motoko can kill Keitaro, then she can kill any man in the clan she pleases, who would we be to stop her?"

Naoto's mother agreed with her husband's sentiment. "Yes, yes… pit Motoko against Keitaro. One way or another, she won't be able to harm a hair on Naoto-kun's head."

Kill this Keitaro bastard? Motoko snorted and yelled out to the pillars and the voices wafting from their sun-obscured peaks. "You take me lightly! I'll kill Keitaro, then Naoto, and then I'll kill every Urashima man! Down to even the children! Watch!"

Finally, one of the voices on-high acknowledged her, Hina's. "You accept the conditions, then?"

"Yes! I will cut Keitaro Urashima down and save my sister; I swear it upon my sword!" Motoko proudly shouted back.

"Very well."

The sun finally went out, leaving a dimly lit sky and revealing the tops of the pillars were also bare. Blinking in surprise, Motoko looked around and realized that she was all alone in the empty field. She looked down, and found her sword at her hip.

"Prepare yourself," she heard Hina warn.

Without hesitation, she drew her sword. "Urashima! Show yourself, I will cut you down!"

No sign of him, of anyone. She raised her head up, and shouted to the heavens.

"I said show yourself!"

She didn't lower her head. As she stared up at the dark sky, her eyes grew wide, and her mouth slowly fell open as she realized that Keitaro was already here. Well, not precisely here, but he had no issue showing himself.

Towering over her, over the pillars, over the Earth itself and eclipsing the sun was Keitaro, looking down on her like a god in the heavens.

She dropped her sword. "I-Impossible."

Noticing her, like the tiniest speck upon the surface, Keitaro smiled slightly and reached out towards her. Traveling through the void of space, as his hand drew close to the Earth, Motoko could see the glow of reentry heat against his palms and fingers as it hurtled towards her.

"This is Keitaro… h-how…? How can I beat this…?"

His hand drew closer.

"I… I can't fight this…"

His palm blotted out the entire sky for her now.

"I… can't kill this…"

The pillars crumbled upon his hand reaching them.

"… There's… there's no way…"

It was utterly hopeless.

As his hand reached her, Motoko tightly shut her eyes.

"Tsuruko…!"

She then felt the softest weight atop her head, and opened her eyes. She was completely underneath his hand, which was probably the size of Japan, and it was just touching the top of her head. "Huh?"

Keitaro lifted his hand only an inch, and then lowered it back onto her head, and then again, before moving it from side to side slightly. He was patting her on the head, she realized.

"He's so… gentle."

Motoko blinked, and Keitaro was his normal height, with his hand still resting upon her head. Even though she was slightly taller than him now, she still felt so small compared to him.

"You…" Humbled, Motoko began to sniffle. "… W-why? Why are you so k-kind to me…?"

Keitaro just smiled back at her, and continued to pat her on her head as she broke down and cried.

There were still tears in her eyes when Motoko awoke from the dream, though maybe that was from the pain she realized she was in as awareness caught up with her. Her throat was burning, her stomach was twisted in knots, and her entire head felt like it was packed with gauze. The only respite from it all was the fact that she was lying on her bed, and the cool, wet towel placed upon her forehead to battle her fever.

She didn't remember making it to her bed, but she didn't care, she was just glad to be in it and away from Keitaro, who was sitting by her bed holding a thermometer in her ear.

Wait.

"What are you doing in my room?" She weakly asked him.

"I'm taking care of you, because I don't get sick." Keitaro removed the thermometer from her ear and read the display. "Thirty-nine point five, well it's better than the forty you were at when you fainted, at least."

Motoko groaned. Of course he didn't get sick either. _Are you some kind of Ultimate Being?_

"You just have the flu. Some rest and a lot of liquids and you'll be fine."

Pulling the blankets up to her chin, Motoko glared weakly at Keitaro. "Urashima."

He hummed an acknowledgement as he looked to her.

"Is there really nothing that can harm you? Be honest with me."

Keitaro looked down at that, and then answered. "There isn't. I wasn't exaggerating when I said they tried _everything."_

"Even thrown you into a volcano?"

"The closest thing they could get was molten steel. They poured it on me and had to use a plasma cutter to cut me out after it cooled. The plasma cutter couldn't hurt me either."

"Exposing you to radiation?"

"I learned to scuba dive so I could swim to the bottom of a spent nuclear fuel pool and sit on the fuel for a few hours."

Motoko stared at him wide-eyed.

"The only reason I haven't had a nuclear bomb blown up in my face is because Japan's not exactly allowed to have those, and there's a ban on testing."

A thought occurred to Motoko. "They did all that to you… and you don't care?"

"Huh?"

"Your family, your own parents, has tried to kill you repeatedly for years. You're not the least bit upset about it?"

Keitaro shrugged his shoulders. "I was upset about it the first few times, but then after I survived some stuff I really shouldn't have, like the industrial fish grinder, it didn't bother me anymore. I'm more annoyed that pretty much everyone else in the family but Granny, Haruka, and Naoto resents me for being absolutely terrible at the family business."

"Don't mention that name," Motoko grumbled. She then stopped. "You know him?"

"He volunteered to kill me a few times. He's a lot like Haruka, kind of cool but actually really nice underneath that." Keitaro hummed.

Motoko rolled her eyes and looked away, before she returned her gaze to him with another question. "Doesn't it bother you that you can't die?"

"Not really."

"What if you can never die? What if you end up outliving everyone because you just can't, aren't you scared of being all alone after that?"

Keitaro's expression became distant. "It's scary to think about, so I don't, but sometimes… well, I lose sleep over it."

"_Among other things."_

Keitaro ignored the voice in his head.

Closing her eyes, Motoko let out a deeper sigh. "You are the Moon Laurel, it's pointless to keep trying."

It wasn't the first time Keitaro had heard that comparison. "I suppose it is."

Motoko hated it. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Well, you can put down the axe."

Motoko's eyes opened, and she stared up at the ceiling with a sigh. She was quiet for a long time, before she finally asked, "Even if I could overcome your immortality. Do you think Naru, or Shinobu, or Kitsune, or even Haruka would let me?"

Keitaro hoped that question wasn't rhetorical, and luckily it was.

"I give up."

At Motoko's concession, Keitaro slowly nodded. "That was the entire point of this, you know. Auntie said she and your sister both agreed to putting you against me so you could get all that anger out of your system, and I guess accept that she married… you know… that guy."

Motoko recalled her dream, and beyond that, the actual day of her outburst. She remembered the sad look on her sister's face, after the initial shock passed. "Yes, but it doesn't change how I feel. I hate him."

"You still love your sister though, don't you?"

Motoko didn't answer, but nodded her head slowly.

"When I was younger, my little sister wanted to go train with Granny like he did. I was really against it because I didn't want her to get hurt or to become a killer, but in the end it was something she wanted to do and I accepted that. Sometimes the people we care for are going to leave us and do things we don't want them to, but if it's something they want to do, and it's good for them in the end, then we should support them because we love them, right?"

He was right, and Motoko was too ill for her pride to muster. "What do I do, then?"

"You could give your sister a call, and see how she's doing. You can at least do that, right?" Keitaro couldn't even reach his sister now, wherever she had gone for her training couldn't even be reached by mail. It had been that way for five years, now.

For Motoko, it had been a year since she'd last heard Tsuruko's voice. "Now? I sound terrible right now."

Keitaro nodded. "You do, but you'll get better and you'll talk to her then. I'll make sure of it."

Motoko pulled the blanket up to her nose, before she looked at Keitaro. "You have no reason to be so kind to me."

"I have reason enough. You love your sister dearly and would do the impossible for her. You and I are exactly alike," he replied as he wrung out another cold towel and replaced the one on Motoko's forehead.

Sighing from the soothing coolness of the towel, Motoko stared at Keitaro thoughtfully, before she closed her eyes. "Your sister must think you're an amazing brother."

Recalling the last time he saw his little sister, Keitaro smiled and nodded.

"And I'm sure yours thinks you're an amazing sister."

* * *

Outside Motoko's door, Kitsune discreetly closed the door from the crack it had been opened and looked back to the rest of the audience that had discreetly joined to watch when she had overheard Keitaro and Motoko first talking. Shinobu looked relieved that the nonsense was over, while Su was more disappointed that she couldn't go inside and try a so-called miracle cure that was composed largely of bananas. The one who seemed most pleased by all this was Naru, who offered her open palm.

"You said a month, it has only been a week."

Staring at Naru's palm, Kitsune let out an annoyed huff. She doled out some cash. "God _damn_ it."

"Hey, at least it's over. I like Motoko, just not when she's letting her issues get the better of her."

Kitsune agreed with a nod. "Now all you get out of here. Last thing we need is a house full of _literally _sick killers."

"But I wanna try my instant cure!" Su complained as they left down the hall.

Shinobu sighed. "Su, bananas are not a cure for the flu."

"Don't believe the lies perpetuated by the cartels of the Orange Industry!"

Letting the younger girls go ahead, Kitsune looked to Naru. "Speaking of issues, when is Keitaro going to learn about yours?"

Naru let out a huff. "He already knows."

"Does he now? Or does he only know there were… incidents?"

Naru fell silent and looked down.

Kitsune nodded, as her eyes opened to scrutinize her. "He doesn't even know about Seta, does he?"

Naru became defensive. "Hey, we only just started dating… that's too heavy to drop on him so soon."

Kitsune nodded. "I worry about you on this because I love you. Don't let that drama bomb cook, got it?"

Naru smiled. "Relax I will, now let me enjoy my honeymoon."

"Yeah, yeah… now come on. The sky's cleared out, it's perfect for a before bed soak with a bottle of sake."

Naru laughed. "Oh we're just begging to catch ourselves a bug too, huh?"

"Hey, with bedside care from our cutie landlord, it's a tempting prospect."

"Hey!"

Laughing, Kitsune bolted for the springs with that, Naru right behind her.

* * *

A/N: I hope you like Su, because next chapter's about her.


End file.
